by Kenneth Eade
CHAPTER TWELVE
The lush green forests surrounding Moscow faded from view through the airplane portal, giving way to feathery white, misty clouds as he bade the strange and wonderful city farewell. Four hours later, he landed in a different world. Deplaning first was a luxury for business class passengers but a necessity for him, so he could make it home as soon as possible without being seen and fortify himself for any type of confrontation. Robert was known in espionage circles as an “illegal.” As such, he was completely expendable and if he was ever caught, his own government would deny any responsibility or authority for his actions. This was the world in which he operated. The adage: “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer” was always at work in Robert’s life, because he ran the risk of having either one of them wipe him from the face of the earth at any time.
He opted to take the RER train from the airport into central Paris. It was an efficient way to travel for someone who always had to have eyes in the back of his head. He made the brisk walk to the train station in the terminal, bought his ticket in the machine, descended the escalator to the track and caught the double-decker train. Thirty-five minutes later he was getting off at Gare du Nord and descended into the metro station. He took the subway to the Michel-Ange stop in the 16th Arrondissement neighborhood of Porte d’Auteil.
He carefully made his way down Rue Erlanger to his apartment building, but, instead of his apartment, he headed first to his storage locker in the basement. The cellar was a cool, dirt-floored, musty labyrinth of storage units with wooden doors, each secured with its own padlock. Robert retrieved the key from behind a loose panel in the wall where he had hidden it and opened the brass padlock on his locker. After a few minutes of shuffling things around, he found what he was looking for under a pile of old magazines – an aluminum gun case. He flipped open the latches on the case and opened the lid to reveal a Glock 17 packed in foam with two fully loaded clips. Robert pocketed one clip, lifted the handgun out of the case, slapped in the other clip and jacked the slide. He was ready for his homecoming.
He approached the door to his apartment with caution. He inserted his key and turned it slowly and gently without making even a clicking sound, and crouched low as he pushed the portal open. He entered as if he were a police officer searching someone’s house other than his own, but intimately familiar with the layout. All of the shutters were drawn closed, the way he had left him, which left the room completely dark, so the sliver of light from the opening door illuminated the entire area and, in the umbra he could see a figure seated in one of the two reclining chairs. Robert aimed his gun at the figure and yelled out.
“Ne bouges pas! Don ’t move!”
He recognized the gruff voice from the man in the chair.
“Don’t worry, Paladine. I have no intention of moving.”
It was the man with no name himself.
“Why are you here? In my house?”
Robert flipped on the light, keeping his gun trained on the familiar intruder, approaching him like a cautious cop.
“I have an assignment for you.”
“You know I’ve only got four more jobs, and then I’m outta here. A free man.”
Robert smiled and the man looked at him with disgust.
“So I’ve heard.”
“So why are you delivering it to me? This isn’t the way it’s done.”
The man turned his head, locking his ice-cold eyes onto Robert’s.
“It’s done the way I say it’s done. I’m the Deputy Director for Operations.”
“Congratulations. A title so classified you can’t even list it on your resumé when they fire you.”
The Deputy Director did have a name, although he had never disclosed it to Robert. Robert had checked him out, although the identity of the Director of Clandestine Operations was so secret, all he was able to find was a rumor that the real name of the man standing before him was Gregory Manizek. The job of the Directorate for Operations was so dirty that it, and even the name of its director, had to be kept a secret. Robert almost laughed at Manizek’s serious look because of the way he puckered his furry, Brezhnev-style eyebrows. Those and his little mouth made him look kind of like an owl.
“So what are you doing in Paris?”
“Your actions necessitated I handle the situation personally.”
Where do they get A-holes like this?
“My actions?”
“Cavorting with an agent of the enemy and running off to Moscow.”
“The enemy? So we’re at war with Russia now?”
“Very funny. Do you want to put that gun down now?”
Manizek carefully withdrew a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and put one in his mouth.
“As soon as you put down your cigarette. No smoking.”
Manizek frowned and smiled, though not from amusement. He released the unlit cigarette from his fingers and crushed it into the rug with the ball of his foot. Robert sheathed his weapon, showing no reaction to the actions of his impolite houseguest.
“Why don’t you sit down, Paladine?”
Robert took a seat in the chair across from him. Between them was a coffee table and on it a plain, unmarked manila folder.
“Why do you keep calling me that?”
“You’re not the only one without a name. And you earned that pseudonym yourself by acting foolishly and irresponsibly. I was against taking you back, you know.”
“So was I.”
“We didn’t appreciate you taking off like that. You weren’t following instructions.”
“I didn’t appreciate being chased by an army of head-chopping, jihadist thugs to a pickup zone where there was no pickup.”
“If it was up to me, after that stunt you pulled in New York, I would have reactivated you, court-martialed your ass and gone for the death penalty.”
“Yeah, well it wasn’t up to you.” Robert motioned with his head to the folder on the table. “I assume that file is what you came to deliver, so why don’t you get the hell out of here before I call the cops to report a dead trespasser in my apartment?”
Manizek frowned with disgust as Robert picked up the folder. He rose his lanky body from the chair and approached within a breath of Robert’s face. “Your assignment is Adnan Khalil.”
Robert opened the folder and flipped through the dossier. “He lives in Paris? That’s not the deal. I never do a job in my hometown.” He pushed the file against Manizek’s chest and let go of it.
“The deal is whatever we say it is and besides, you don’t have a home.” Manizek threw the folder back on the table.
Robert grinned, tried to hide his disappointment. After this job, it’s true, he would again be homeless. Just as a cat won’t crap where it eats, he couldn’t live in a town where he had killed somebody. He latched onto Manizek’s cold, steel-grey eyes. “So what’s so special about this guy?”
“Why? He’s your assignment. Just do it.”
Robert gave Manizek a cold stare.
“Adnan Khalil is a terrorist. He’s the suspected mastermind of the Charlie Hebdo attacks.”
“Then he’s a French problem. What does it have to do with us?”
“He’s a bad guy. Maybe even worse than you. The main recruiter for ISIS in Europe. His specialty is cultivating suicide bombers – who’ve been blowing up American targets almost exclusively. The president himself wants this one done. He’d do it himself, but we can’t send a drone after him in the heart of Paris.”
“I’ll take a look at it.”
Manizek glared at him. “Don’t question your assignment, just follow it. We own your ass and don’t forget it. Every time you get a portfolio like this you’re expected to execute it without hesitation.”
Robert squinted his blank eyes at the man. “Then you’d better hope a dossier like this never pops up with your name in it.”
Manizek smiled again and stood up to take his leave. He paused in the foyer and turned to Robert.
“Thi
s guy’s under round-the-clock surveillance.”
“Great. All the more reason for the French to take care of it.”
“They want to put him in prison. To do that, first they have to catch him in an overt act. Who knows how many people will die in the meantime? Then it’ll be years in French courts. In those years, he will have sent hundreds more of Americans to early graves. We want to send him on his way – now.”
The man with no name left without saying good-bye, which was just fine with Robert. He shut the door behind him and thought to himself this would not be the last time he would see the man, and he didn’t look forward to the next time.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Thousands of miles away, in McLean, Virginia, Nathan Anderson picked up the phone. It was his counterpart, Ted Barnard, from the CIA.
“Just wanted to give you a head’s up.”
“What’s happening?”
“The PAL situation has been contained.”
“Is he still in operation?”
“Yes, back on the job. Seems he was a little pissed off when his ride didn’t show up after the last job.”
“Wouldn’t you be?”
“Nathan, you have to remember, this is the guy who joined a terrorist group in New York and killed a guard at the Indian Point Energy Center in the midst of a near nuclear disaster.”
“Are you more embarrassed because he accomplished what nobody else in any counter-terrorism unit could or angry that he marches to the beat of his own drum?”
“Whatever. Somehow you were able to convince the president we needed him and now it is what it is.”
“Well, thanks for keeping me posted.”
Nathan set his phone down on the desk. It felt good to know something he had done had made a difference and he knew he was just a step away from making his agency the go-to center for combatting terrorism. Paladine was definitely the right choice and he smiled to himself with pride at having been given the credit for it.
***
Robert studied the contents of the folder to reveal his latest assignment. Adnan Khalil was a jihadist recruiter for ISIS who was credited, unofficially, with masterminding the Charlie Hebdo attack. That meant he would be on everyone’s radar, all the time. It wasn’t going to be a free-for-all like it was in civil war torn Syria or a hit on an obscure person that the government had on their “watch list” but wasn’t really watching whom he could waste and then walk away without a witness.
This one is going to be a real challenge.
Robert secured the file away. He would memorize the details, destroy them, and keep the picture for verification. But he had to take care of more important things first – he had to get his dog.
He had dropped the dog off at a home near the Bois de Boulogne, whose owners had bragged they would treat the dog as one of their own. They were two metro stops away, in a beautiful residential area of the city that was just a few steps from the forest.
When Robert appeared at their front door, the big scruffy dog with the droopy ears howled, forced its way through the door, practically knocking him over, and assaulting him with his huge tongue. Robert kneeled down and absorbed the affection from who was probably the closest being to him on the earth.
“Hey, Butthead, how ya doin’ boy?”
The lady standing at the door, a lanky 40-something with a short haircut, smiled.
“Why did you name him Butthead?’
Robert laughed. “Cause he’s butt-ugly and it’s almost impossible to tell his face from his rear end.”
Butthead’s French boarders couldn’t get used to his unconventional name, but, as English was not their first language, they didn’t seem to think it was that funny. It just happened to be the first thing Robert had called the dog and it stuck to him as a name. Robert thanked and paid Butthead’s hosts and the two took off. The dog was so well trained, it stuck right by Robert’s side – no need for a leash.
They took the long way home, across the street and through the forest. Once they were in the wild, Robert relaxed the restrictions on the dog and he romped around, smelling and watering trees and wagging his tail like a helicopter blade. They traversed the first part of the forest, which was a huge rolling lawn surrounding a large pond. The dog fell on the grass, turned on its back and writhed around like he was trying to scratch an itch he couldn’t reach. Robert laughed so hard he thought he would pee his pants.
He ran toward an adjacent jogging trail at a light trot and the dog galloped dutifully behind him. The trail led them into the thick of the forest, with trees so tall the sunlight was filtered through their leaves and branches, which made an artful sky of sunrays as well as a cooling effect. Both dog and man felt in touch with nature as Robert walked along the trail and the dog meandered off a bit, sniffing his way through the labyrinth of trees and stopping to gulp water from a babbling stream.
Robert whistled, and the dog popped out from the thick expanse of forest and lumbered back onto the trail, its muzzle dripping with water, and ran to him. They wandered through the dirt trail until they came upon another clearing: A picnic area – another large expanse of grass which was about the halfway point for home. The dog was curious about the families who were picnicking on blankets they had spread out on the grass and the teenagers who were using their blankets for necking. He would have loved to have shared any kind of picnic leftovers, but knew better than to invite himself to the party. Robert dropped onto the grass and the dog jumped on top of him. They wrestled for a while. Then, they got up and headed home. There was much work to be done.
***
He spent the evening researching Khalil’s patterns on social media. Like most jihadist recruiters, Khalil was active on both Facebook and Twitter, but he wasn’t the type to post a “play-by-play” of his daily activities. No selfies, no pictures of his cat, no jokes. Just jihadi propaganda. From the file Manizek had given him, he had Khalil’s home address. Khalil worked out of his home – there was no separate work location. He was able to pick up only a few tidbits of information from the traditional net, and then dove into the alternate Internet – the Darknet – for more in-depth research. There, the rhetoric against the infidels was stronger, but Khalil had been careful. He hadn’t given away the location of any of his meetings or appointments or the details of any of his activities.
Robert began the next day surveilling Khalil. Hiding in plain sight in the periphery of the hustle and bustle of the city, he watched the terrorist leave his home in the morning. He noticed that he wasn’t the only one watching, however. Plainclothes cops from who-knows-what agency were also stalking him. He first noticed their unmarked white car parked in a space on Khalil’s street in the 8th Arrondissement. Only a policeman or a very persistent person could ever hope to find a parking space on the street in that busy Parisian neighborhood. One of the cops exited the white car and followed Khalil on foot. Robert carefully hung back as he casually walked in the same general direction.
Khalil stopped at the corner bakery for a croissant and a cup of coffee. Robert couldn’t help but notice his Parisian habits, as well as his expensive attire. Khalil’s $1,000 euro Ferragamo Python shoes were a dead giveaway
Quite the hypocrite, isn’t he?
The more Robert watched Khalil rubbing elbows with the people, flirting with the bakery shop girl and smiling at everyone around him, the more he began to dislike him. But he was, after all, a salesman, selling jihad to impressionable youngsters, disillusioned teenagers desperately searching for purpose in their mundane lives. But that dream led to nothing but pain and death, for both the young people themselves and their victims. Khalil finished his breakfast and took off from the bakery at a brisk pace, ducking into the metro station, followed by the undercover dick. Robert attached himself to a crowd of commuters and scurried down the stairs after them.
He could see Khalil and the stalking policeman both ahead, already past the turnstiles and heading in the direction of the Champs Élysées. Robert hung back, passing a s
axophone-playing man in the tunnel, and flowed with the commuters to the platform. He watched as the approaching train slowed to a stop, the people poured out, and Khalil stepped on. The cop also stepped on, one car down. Robert waited on the platform at the end car, observing until the final buzzer sounded the closing of the doors. He was halfway through the door when he saw Khalil suddenly come out in a brisk walk. Robert ducked out and made himself a part of the wall as he watched the detective attempt to leave as well, but the train pulled away from the track with the cop still in it and Khalil bounded up the stairs against the “do not enter” signs and across the platform to the track for the other direction. Robert doubled back around quickly and crossed the tracks as well, just as the train arrived, and jumped into the last car of the center-bound train with his eyes on Khalil at all times.
He resisted the temptation to take this window of opportunity to take out Khalil with the .22 Ruger with the noise suppressor he kept strapped to his calf. He was a professional and that meant not only the hit had to be perfect, but his getaway as well, so Robert fulfilled his original plan to observe all of his target’s daily patterns. Khalil would live to die another day.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Robert’s instincts proved to be correct when Khalil picked up another not-as-obvious tail upon exiting the Place de Clichy metro station. Whoever had him under surveillance had obviously already nailed down his daily patterns. He stayed behind and followed the tail as he stalked Khalil. Beyond the respectable centerpiece of the square were row upon row of sex shops and erotic supermarkets offering products, films, and live shows catering to any prurient taste. Khalil headed off the beaten path toward that area, where the more intimate entertainment could be had.