“Wish we had more like him.”
“I don’t know how you can even be open today,” Kassani said.
“Just another day. Nothing unusual. If I closed, it would be unusual.”
“And him coming in, wanting all those shoes. Does that happen often?”
“A band came three months ago and bought fifty pair. British. But, yes, unusual.” He peeled off a twenty-euro note. “Go on, Soufiane, get us lunch.” Bourgua wanted to be alone for a few minutes. He wasn’t as relaxed as he pretended. He’d waited a very long time for this day.
Then he was alone. As he preferred. It was strange. As a rule, he didn’t like people much, but they liked him. Especially the French. He knew how they saw him. The perfect Arab. Cool but not challenging, successful but not political. They managed to fawn over him and talk down to him at once. If only the rest were more like him. They never noticed that he hated how they put him on parade. He hated even more the nickname his hipster customers had given him: the Sneaker Pimp.
The Puma. That was what his friends called him.
The stories the DGSE was hearing about the secret Islamic State network weren’t entirely right. Bourgua called it al-Hadi—The Quiet—not al-Zalam. More important, it was platoon- rather than squad-sized. Bourgua oversaw five lieutenants, each of whom commanded six jihadis. Including him, thirty-six Quiet Men in all.
SuperSneaks gave him the perfect cover. Even potential terrorists were allowed to buy shoes. Anyway, three of his lieutenants had never shown up on any terrorist screens. The French services knew of the other two, but not how important they were.
Bourgua understood the dangers of DGSE and NSA surveillance. He passed messages face-to-face whenever he could. But he mostly let the networks run themselves. Imams and recruiters didn’t need him to tell them how to raise money or bring men to Syria. He had known the Bataclan attacks were coming and been happy enough for the distraction they caused. But he hadn’t ordered them or managed them. The jihadis behind them hadn’t known he existed.
The hands-off attitude was the only way to keep him and al-Hadi secret. The network had taken him more than five years to build. But he’d stayed patient, trusting in Allah, knowing the power of his creation, knowing he’d most likely have only one chance to use it.
That moment had come.
—
KASSANI WAS SMILING as he walked through Sevran. He didn’t know exactly what Bourgua was planning. But Bourgua seemed convinced they’d succeed. And Kassani had stopped doubting him.
Their preparations so far had gone smoothly. French customs hadn’t touched the bottles of DF that Adnan the Turk sent to a grocery store in Toulouse. No one stopped the Quiet Man who drove them to the air-conditioned garage in Sevran where Bourgua stored his most valuable sneakers, two hundred fifty thousand euros of inventory.
Then the real work began. First, Kassani and an electrical engineer named Firas had to design and build what they called the ventilator, the combination of fan and heater that would aerosolize the liquid sarin and blow it into the ducts of L’église Notre-Dame de Bonne-Nouvelle.
“This stuff, do I need to boil it?”
“Not necessarily. It’s volatile. As long as we heat it enough to get it into the air, it’s fine.”
“Does it corrode? Metal or plastic?”
“Only people.”
“Easy enough, then.”
Eighteen hours later, Firas and Kassani brought Bourgua a prototype. It was a steel box the size of a cake pan with a flat heating element beneath the base, a narrow fan on top, twin batteries on the sides. Admittedly, the device had a certain college science fair quality. But it worked.
“We can turn it on from a distance?” Bourgua said.
“Of course. I’ll attach timers. Like a bomb. The alarm goes, triggers the circuits, the heater and fan.”
“What if we can’t be sure, exactly, when we need it? If we have to put it in place before we know?”
“A mobile, then. It’s a bit more complicated, but no problem.”
“Say, mobile is out. Out entirely.”
Firas frowned. “You mean, someone’s shut it down?”
“Exactly that.”
“In that case, a short-range radio transmitter.”
“Like Wi-Fi?” Kassani said.
“Basically, yes. It doesn’t run through the mobile network. It’s a little complicated because we need a timer to turn the radio receiver on at a certain time. Or if it’s only going to be a few days, we could leave it on standby, trust that the battery won’t die. Sure, it’s possible. But someone will have to be close. Twenty, thirty meters at most.”
“Insh’allah, that should be all right,” Bourgua said.
“Then, yes, I can,” Firas said. “I’ll make a key fob. It’ll look like the kind that unlocks a car.”
“Could security people jam that radio signal?”
“They can jam everything. But I don’t think they would. They’d have no way to use their own radios.”
“Then let’s do the radio, add the timers as a backup.”
A day later, Firas showed them a working prototype. Kassani tested it with twenty milliliters of sarin and a stray mutt that a Quiet Man picked up near Orly Airport, on the south side of Paris, far from Sevran. The dog died less pitifully than Kassani’s human subjects, probably because it didn’t have time to be frightened before the sarin kicked in. But it died nonetheless. Bourgua insisted on watching. Kassani gave him a gas mask and kept the atropine close.
They decided to build four ventilators for the best coverage inside the church. Firas put them together as Kassani oh-so-carefully mixed the sarin and transferred the lethal liquid to plastic tubs that fit neatly inside the boxes.
At each step, Kassani feared they’d face some insurmountable technical obstacle. But a week after Kassani arrived in Paris, he and Firas had four working ventilators, with radio controls. Kassani wondered who would trigger them. A jihadi? Someone who was going to be inside anyway?
For three days, the ventilators sat squat and lethal in the garage, surrounded by orange boxes of Nikes. Swoosh. Then they disappeared.
Forty-eight hours later, Bourgua came to Kassani. “Done.”
“In the church? Already?”
“Already.”
“I’m starting to believe Allah wants us to succeed.”
“Of course He wants us to succeed.”
Ideally, they would have tested the ventilators in situ with a harmless chemical. But breaking into the basement twice would double the risk of being caught. More important, Bourgua’s men would then have to pour out whatever liquid they’d chosen to test and replace it with the sarin. Kassani didn’t trust them to make that transfer safely, certainly not in a dark and cramped basement. The earlier experiments would have to do. Still, he found himself puzzled.
“There must be a hundred churches in Paris, Raouf.”
“More.”
“This one, it’s not famous. Not like the other Notre-Dame, or even that big white one on the hill you see from the train.”
“Montmartre. No, that’s true.”
“So how can you be sure that all of Paris will show up there?”
“Not just Paris, Soufiane.” Bourgua offered Kassani the thinnest of smiles.
“Please, Raouf, I know you love your secrets, but without me you wouldn’t have any of this.”
“I’ll tell you this, then. You’ll find out Sunday.”
—
THE AVENUE DES CHAMPS-ÉLYSÉES might have been the most famous street in the world. Two kilometers long, it sloped gently uphill from the Place de la Concorde to the Arc de Triomphe. Tree-lined gardens flanked its eastern half. Souvenir shops, tourist trap restaurants, and the world’s most expensive brands mingled in the buildings farther west. At night, after a glass of wine, when taillights and he
adlights blurred into a red-and-white kaleidoscope, the Champs could feel like a three-dimensional dream.
But the avenue played a more prosaic role in Parisian life. In a city filled with narrow and winding streets, it was a vital traffic artery, offering four arrow-straight lanes each way. It carried an endless stream of cars and trucks between western Paris and the heart of the city. To avoid taking it required a special effort.
So the driver of Antoine Martin’s limousine saw no reason not to use it for his fifteen-kilometer trip from Martin’s apartment to his parents’ house. The same route he had followed the Sunday before. And the Sunday before that, just days after the quietest of the Quiet Men first set his eyes on the address that Walter Crompond gave to Aziz Murak.
Though the Champs carried as much traffic as many highways, it lacked a center median. Vehicles heading east and west passed within a meter of one another. The lack of a barrier usually didn’t matter. Parisiens drove as they lived—aggressively, even rudely, but within the law. Even taxi drivers rarely ran lights or sped.
Martin’s limousine had emergency lights and sirens, of course. But Martin had told his driver not to use them as long as traffic was flowing. He thought doing so would only call attention to the limo. And Sunday traffic in central Paris was usually fine. Aside from tourist-focused businesses, the city more or less shut down. This morning was no exception, with traffic on the Champs heavy but moving easily between the lights. Martin’s limousine eased along at forty kilometers an hour in the left lane. The chase car, a Renault that wasn’t armored, followed directly behind.
Martin hadn’t wanted the second car, but today he didn’t mind. His second bodyguard rode in it, giving him and Damien the limo’s back seat to themselves, a chance at a normal conversation. Martin found those harder and harder. When he escaped the secret world, he wanted to think about trivial matters, mainly sports. Nadal versus Federer versus Djokovic . . . This job had made him a lousy father, a worse husband. He consoled himself with the fact that at least he wasn’t having an affair.
“How’s school?”
“Eh, fine.”
“Chemistry this year, right?”
“Right.” Damien’s half-open eyes pleaded, Don’t interrogate me. Martin winced. He’d become the sort of father who didn’t know how to talk to his sons.
“How about girls?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” Lately, Damien had insisted on wearing his hair in an almost military cut, an unflattering look for his narrow face. But he was handsome enough. With his brothers to teach him the ropes, Martin expected he’d have no problem finding a first love. Or two. “You must know.”
“What if I don’t like girls?”
“Of course girls will like you—”
“That’s not what I said, Dad. You don’t listen anymore.”
His son was right. His son was thinking about coming out, or trying to come out, or just plain coming out. Martin hadn’t even heard. Now he had no idea what to say. All these years as a diplomat, no idea what to say. He patted Damien’s shoulder, received a single grave nod back. Listening now?
“Are you sure about this? What about the sisters?”
“Sisters?”
“The twins, the pretty ones who live down from Grandma and Grandpa, I thought that was half the reason you came with me to play . . .”
Damien smiled hopelessly, and Martin felt like a fool. Too late, he remembered the sisters had an older brother, too, a real specimen who liked to run with no shirt.
“Have you told Mom?”
“No, but I think she knows.”
And didn’t tell me. “And your brothers?”
Damien never had a chance to answer.
—
THE PUMA’S Quiet Men watched the limousine from the moment it left Martin’s building. A moped rider on Rue Saint-Sébastien, a bicyclist on Rue des Archives, a taxi driver on Rue de Rivoli. One by one, they sent word to a white Nissan Pulsar hatchback making a slow loop through the sleepy streets of the 16th Arrondissement. The chase car actually helped the watchers do their job. The two vehicles moved in tandem, making them easy to track.
So just as the limousine turned off the Place de la Concorde, the hatchback made its own turn, leaving the traffic circle that surrounded the Arc de Triomphe, entering the Champs at its western end.
The vehicles were two kilometers apart, closing at eighty kilometers an hour. Thirteen hundred meters a minute. Simple math suggested they were a minute and a half from meeting. The traffic lights added two minutes, giving Damien Martin enough time to tell his father what had been so much on his mind.
The Pulsar traveled in the leftmost eastbound lane. Two men inside, driver and passenger. In the hatch they’d stowed three big wooden crates that held three hundred twenty kilograms of RDX, military-grade plastic explosive. They’d chosen a relatively small, lightweight vehicle. The limousine’s driver was less likely to notice it. It was more maneuverable. Most important, it wouldn’t muffle the power of the RDX.
The men knew that in a matter of minutes they would die. They felt anticipation, not fear. They understood the importance of what they were about to do.
The Pulsar’s passenger received texts every few seconds on the location of Martin’s limousine. These were not street names but numbers, each corresponding to a traffic light along the Champs. He spoke them as they arrived, allowing the driver to keep his eyes on the road. In the last few days, the two men had driven the boulevard over and over, memorizing where its lights were located, how long they lasted, how much time driving between them required.
“Three,” the passenger said. “Four.” In his lap he held the detonator, a gray box the size of a garage door opener. It was already armed. To prevent it from going off accidentally, a plastic shield protected the single white button in its center. A thick black wire ran from it to the crates.
The driver saw the limousine now. A hundred meters ahead. He eased off the gas, gave space to the car ahead. When the limo was forty meters away, he jammed down his foot. The Pulsar surged. He swung the steering wheel left, cut into the westbound lanes, narrowly avoiding the yellow BMW in front of the limo.
“Allahu akbar—”
—
THE WHITE HATCHBACK came out of nowhere.
Martin’s driver slammed his horn, pulled the limousine’s steering wheel sideways, too late.
The two vehicles bent together, grille to grille, engine to engine, the Nissan at an angle to the limo.
Air bags exploded from the limousine’s steering wheel and dash, cocooning the men in front. The limo’s ballistic-glass windshield starred but didn’t shatter. In back, Martin and Damien were jolted onto the floor, arms and legs tangled.
“Dad—”
“C’est bon. C’est bon.” But Martin knew it wasn’t. He was furious with himself. For underestimating the threat. For failing to insist that his men follow proper countersurveillance, vary their routes, keep their eyes up. His sloppiness and stupidity might be about to get his son killed. Merde, merde, merde.
In front, Martin’s bodyguard pulled himself out of the air bag, reached for his door.
“Sirens and go, just go,” Martin yelled. The driver and bodyguard hadn’t been in Iraq. Martin had. He knew they were deep inside what the Americans called the kill zone, knew what was coming, vehicle-borne improvised explosive device, the phrase strangely French in its length and complexity.
—
BEHIND THEM, the chase car skidded to a stop. Martin’s second bodyguard threw open his door, reached for the Heckler & Koch 416C in his lap.
Their only chance.
—
THE PULSAR’S windshield had cracked, its air bags popped. Black smoke seethed from its engine block. But the passenger still cradled the detonator. He reached for the cover that protected the button.
<
br /> Stuck. It was stuck.
—
MARTIN’S second bodyguard stepped out of the chase car as a minivan swerved past, honking.
He lifted the H&K. The pandemonium began, drivers yelling, tourists staring open-mouthed from the sidewalks.
The bodyguard locked onto the Nissan, two men inside, their faces hidden by windshield and air bags.
He raised the H&K—
But he had no angle, the limo was in the way, and he had to see them, Sunday morning on the Champs-Élysées, maybe the crash had been an accident, he couldn’t light up two men without at least seeing if they were Arab or not. He ran forward, looking for an angle, yelling.
“Sortez! Sortez!”
—
THE DRIVER of the chase car had no such qualms, he’d seen the Nissan accelerate and swerve across the road. He knew. He shouldered open his door and stepped halfway out, keeping the door frame as cover, pulling his pistol. Unlike the bodyguard, he had a decent angle. He lifted the pistol, aimed.
And a Mercedes SUV in the eastbound lane flew past and knocked the Renault’s door into him. The door pinned him, bent his wrist. He yelped, dropped the pistol onto the roof of the sedan.
—
IN THE NISSAN, the driver didn’t understand why they were alive. “What’s wrong?”
The passenger raised the detonator. “It’s locked somehow, I can’t press it—”
“Give it.”
—
IN THE LIMOUSINE, Martin’s driver freed himself from the steering wheel air bag. Barely ten seconds had passed since the Nissan rammed the limousine.
“Back up, get clear,” Martin yelled. “Now!”
The driver triggered the sirens, put the limousine in reverse, stamped on the gas. Metal ground metal. But the fact that the cars hadn’t hit head-on worked for the jihadis. The limo’s front axle was bent, its brake rotor wrapped around its left front wheel. As its engine moaned, the limo lurched back, tugging the Pulsar with it.
—
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