Nine looked at her impatiently. Isabelle studied his face as if attempting to intuitively understand his anguished soul. “You’re desperately trying to remain alive,” she continued in French, “but inside you’re already dead. You heart is frozen. To me, you are a dead man!”
Having heard enough, Nine yanked her out of bed in one swift movement. He frog-marched her into the bathroom where he pulled all her clothes off then pushed her naked into the shower cubicle before turning the cold tap on. Isabelle shrieked as the cold water hit her. She tried to jump out of the cubicle, but Nine barred her way. Thankfully, he turned the hot water tap on, so the water’s temperature soon became bearable.
Isabelle felt humiliated. She’d never been treated so callously by anybody. As Nine walked out of the bathroom, Isabelle began to sob. Her tears mingled with the warm water as she stood under the shower. She felt so bereft she didn’t even bother to wash herself.
Outside the bathroom, Nine pulled the black kit off his chest and began to apply a new disguise. The fugitive agent removed a tiny eye-liner and a lipstick from the kit, applying a dark eye-liner and painting his lips black. He looked up as a fully-dressed but still tearful Isabelle emerged from the bathroom. “Sit down,” he ordered her. “The media will have your picture everywhere by now. You need a disguise.”
Although Nine could sense Isabelle’s wretched inner-state, he deliberately ignored her. He couldn’t allow himself to soften. With operatives like Kentbridge and Seventeen – both expert assassins – closing in on him, this was not the time to be compassionate.
22
Later that morning, sitting in the back seat of a taxi, Nine kept one eye on Isabelle and one on the view outside as they were driven through the city center. Shoppers and workers rubbed shoulders in the busy streets outside. Nine checked his watch: 10.20.
The couple had undergone a transformation since they were in the hotel. He was now disguised as a punk, complete with fake tattoos, body piercings and spiky green hair, while she was disguised as a Goth with hardcore make-up that included dark eye-liner and black lipstick. They were completely unrecognizable.
The operative held his pistol under a newspaper on his knee. Although Isabelle could see the weapon was pointed at her, she felt less fearful than before. Since Nine had humiliated her back at the hotel, she had dug deep and found some inner strength. Her survival instincts were kicking in and she could sense freedom would be hers if she played her cards right. “Where are you taking me?” she whispered in French. Nine stared straight ahead and ignored her. “Say something,” she said a little louder.
“Another hotel,” he whispered. “Now keep quiet.” Nine moved the newspaper so Isabelle could see the pistol more clearly. She pretended she hadn’t seen it.
“Why?” she asked. “What was wrong with the last one?” Nine said nothing more.
The taxi stopped in heavy traffic outside a shopping mall. Nine saw a hotel up ahead. He still didn’t know what he was going to do with Isabelle, but knew they needed to relocate to stay one step ahead of Kentbridge. Nine leaned forward, tapped the driver on the shoulder and pointed at the hotel. “Drop us there,” he said in French.
While Nine was distracted, Isabelle flung open the passenger door and jumped out of the taxi before it stopped. She fell down onto all fours, grazing her hands and knees on the asphalt, but quickly regained her feet and sprinted toward the nearby mall. Cursing, Nine paid the taxi driver, then raced after his rebellious hostage. Behind him, the driver smiled to himself, thinking he’d just witnessed a lovers’ quarrel.
Inside the mall, a security guard paused in his rounds to watch a newsflash on a wide-screen television set on display outside a retail store. A full-screen image of Isabelle appeared onscreen. A newsreader told viewers Paris Police had confirmed Isabelle Alleget, the daughter of former Minister of the Arts, Fabrice Alleget, had been taken hostage. The newsreader said police had no comment on the identity of her abductor as yet.
Isabelle entered the mall. She spotted the security guard and ran up to him, breathless. “Help me! I'm Isabelle Alleget! I've been kidnapped!”
Convinced she was a prankster, the guard looked at the wild-eyed Goth before him and chuckled. “Yeah, sure, and I'm Napoléon Bonaparte!”
The guard's demeanor changed when Nine suddenly ran up and grabbed Isabelle. As the guard reached for his pistol, Nine kicked him. The impact sent the guard flying backwards through the store's plate glass window, shattering it. Frightened customers and shop assistants fled screaming. More security guards arrived, attracted by the commotion.
Dragging Isabelle with him, Nine raced up an escalator to the first floor as emergency alarms shrieked throughout the mall. He led Isabelle up a succession of escalators to the fourth floor. There, he leaned over a rail and saw the security guards conferring with several gendarmes on the ground floor. An alert officer saw Nine and pointed up at him. He and the others ran up the escalator toward their quarry.
Nine's trained eyes scanned the mall's interior. He had a sudden flash of intuition and began dragging a still-struggling Isabelle up another escalator toward the next floor. Half way up, he saw a gendarme waiting for them at the top with pistol drawn. The gendarme hit an emergency button which stopped the escalator. Nine immediately drew his pistol and pointed it at Isabelle's head. He held her tight so the gendarme couldn't line up a clean shot at him. “Drop your weapon!” Nine ordered the gendarme in French.
The gendarme hesitated. Nine fired a warning shot just above the gendarme's head. Isabelle screamed. The gendarme reluctantly placed his pistol on an escalator step. Nine motioned to him to back up then pulled Isabelle up the escalator. As they neared the top, he kicked the discarded pistol away and knocked the gendarme unconscious.
Nine surveyed the other gendarmes and security guards who were now racing up the escalator from the floor below. He spotted an elevator and pulled Isabelle toward it. Nine pressed the elevator button while supporting his captive who appeared close to collapse after the dramas of the past few minutes. He pushed the button again.
The elevator doors opened just as the gendarmes arrived, weapons drawn. Nine threw Isabelle inside the elevator and hit the Close button. His pursuers ran toward the elevator as its doors started to shut. Isabelle screamed again as Nine dived on top of her to shield her in case there was any shooting directed their way. The doors closed just in time.
As the elevator descended, Nine studied the ceiling panels. He hit the Stop button and the elevator paused between floors. Trembling, Isabelle looked up at him warily. Nine lifted her to her feet. She shook her head adamantly when she realized he planned to escape by climbing out of the ceiling of the elevator. “I am not coming,” she said stubbornly. “Why don’t you just kill me?”
Nine grabbed her and pulled her face close to his. “You're coming.”
Sixty seconds later, on the ground floor, half a dozen gendarmes waited, guns drawn, as the elevator doors opened. Surprised to find the elevator empty, they raced off in different directions, shouting and brandishing their weapons.
On a stairway leading to the Metro underground station beneath the mall, Nine pulled Isabelle down the steps two at a time. Only his steadying hand prevented her from falling. At the bottom stairwell, they literally crashed into a young, smartly-dressed, business couple who had just left the station. The woman took one look at the pistol pointed at her and opened her mouth to scream.
“Scream and you die, madam,” Nine assured her in French.
The woman remained silent. Something about Nine told her he wasn’t kidding.
“What do you want?” the young man asked nervously.
“Your clothes.” Nine waved the pistol impatiently. “Hurry.” Ashen-faced, the couple didn’t wait to be asked twice. They began removing their clothes, all the while looking at the pistol pointed at them. Nine turned to Isabelle. “You strip too,” he ordered. “And wipe that make-up off.” He handed her a moist tissue from a tiny packet of tissues he carr
ied in the make-up kit strapped to his chest. At the same time, he started undressing.
Aware of what Nine was capable of, Isabelle resignedly did as she was told. In less than a minute, she’d removed her makeup, and she and Nine had changed into the couple’s clothes. An ill-fitting but nevertheless smart suit now covered Nine’s fake tattoos and body-piercings, and he wore a pair of spectacles. He ruffled his spiky green hair. This eliminated the spikes, but not the color. It was the best he could do for now.
Meanwhile, Isabelle looked elegant in the young woman’s business suit. The last vestiges of her Gothic make-up were still visible, but Nine figured no security cameras would pick that up. Knowing every second counted, he opened the door leading into the underground station and pulled Isabelle through it. He slammed the door shut after him, leaving the near-naked couple bemused and shaken in the stairwell.
Nine pulled Isabelle along the station platform where commuters competed for space. The pair melted into the crowd just as gendarmes charged into the station.
Aware his green hair stood out like dog’s balls, Nine scanned the heads of the commuters around him. He spotted a stylish cap on the head of a middle-aged commuter who was being pushed along toward him in the crowd. As the man was swept past, Nine reached out and snatched the cap from its owner’s head.
“Vous bâtard! Rendez-le!” the man shouted angrily. He tried to turn back to retrieve his cap, but the thief was already out of sight.
Beneath the cap that now covered his green hair, Nine glanced back at the gendarmes. They were busy searching the faces of people in the crowd. Theirs was a hopeless task compounded when hundreds of passengers disembarked from another train.
Relieved he’d thrown his pursuers off the scent, for the moment at least, Nine turned his attention back to Isabelle whose hand he still grasped tightly. She scowled at him with a look of utter disgust. Ignoring her obvious contempt for him, he pulled her toward the nearest exit. He knew it would only be a matter of minutes before the gendarmes cordoned off all exits.
#
Isabelle’s father was busy elsewhere in Paris trying to find her. Monsieur Alleget had already been in touch with every influential contact he’d gained during his long career.
Since returning to the capital earlier that day, the retired politician had met with key figures in the Ministère de l'Intérieur, or French Interior Ministry, as well as certain military officials. He’d even met with one of the commanders of the French Foreign Legion and with medium-level officials within DST, the French intelligence department that was also co-operating with Kentbridge and Seventeen.
Even though he’d passed Seventeen in one of the long corridors at DST headquarters, and actually brushed against her, Monsieur Alleget had no reason to suspect the Americans’ presence in the French secret service building. The unofficial code of silence that existed between the French secret service and the CIA was alive and well, and was never likely to be penetrated by a retired politician, no matter how influential.
Monsieur Alleget was heartened by the outcome of his meetings. Everyone he met with assured him they’d do everything in their power to help rescue Isabelle and promised they’d pass on any intelligence directly or indirectly relating to her, even if it was classified. Such was the high regard in which he was held by French Ministers and by the public he’d served so faithfully over the years.
Not satisfied with just enlisting the help of these various individuals, Monsieur Alleget embarked on his own investigation. He studied recent crimes reported in the media. This entailed laboriously scanning every recent edition of the major Parisian newspapers. Monsieur Alleget was specifically looking for crimes involving terrorist organizations or American agencies. His goal was to try to find some kind of correlation between Isabelle’s abduction and any suspicious crimes. He knew if he could find that connection, it could help finger the likely party responsible for his daughter’s abduction.
23
Special Agent Cho-Wu picked his moment to enter an exclusive restaurant that was only a few streets away from the DST French Intelligence headquarters in central Paris. His MSS superiors had received reliable intelligence the French secret service was co-operating with two American agents who would be dining at this particular restaurant at this particular time. He’d been ordered to find out what he could about the agents and to learn if they were connected with the rogue American operative.
Having already confirmed his targets were in fact dining within, the crafty Chinese agent waited for a group of lunchtime patrons to enter the establishment and slipped in, unnoticed, behind them. As the maitre-de attended to the others, Cho-Wu sidled up to a coat rack and placed a tiny electronic bug under the collar of a fashionable suit jacket he’d seen one of his targets remove on arrival. He briefly looked around to make sure nobody had seen him, before leaving undetected.
In the restaurant’s dining room, Cho-Wu’s unsuspecting targets, Kentbridge and Seventeen, dined together at a table for two. Seventeen pecked at her food while her superior addressed her in hushed tones. As always, the two were all business.
Seventeen nodded as she listened. Outwardly, she seemed calm. Inwardly, she was seething. She hated taking orders from someone she felt superior to.
Short of pissing against a wall, she backed herself in any department against Kentbridge – be that physical, mental or whatever. Seventeen believed she’d have a better chance of tracking down Nine if left to her own resources. She reminded herself she didn’t need any over-the-hill, middle-aged, pen-pusher telling her what to do, no matter how highly he may be regarded in Omegan circles.
As soon as Seventeen finished her meal, Kentbridge looked hard at his subordinate. “I’ll see you in ten,” he said by way of dismissal. Seventeen departed the restaurant without so much as a goodbye. As she boarded a taxi, she never noticed Cho-Wu observing her from further along the street.
Kentbridge remained in the restaurant, making notes on a pad. A couple of minutes later, he left some Euros on the table before retrieving his fashionable suit jacket from the coat rack in the restaurant’s foyer. Outside, he climbed into a waiting car which took him to the nearby DST headquarters. There, he found Seventeen waiting for him as arranged. As they entered the building, neither took any notice of a car with dark-tinted windows which had followed Kentbridge from the restaurant.
Minutes later, in the DST’s meeting room, Kentbridge and Seventeen sat facing their superior, Omega director Andrew Naylor, who had flown across the Atlantic to deal with the Nine situation as he called it. Also in the room were two French agents. All were oblivious to the microscopic bug under the collar of Kentbridge's suit jacket.
The use of the DST headquarters had been set up for the Omegans by CIA Deputy Director Marcia Wilson, Omega’s chief mole within that agency. Like the British before them, nobody in the French secret service was remotely aware of the Omega Agency. They simply accepted the three Americans were employees of the CIA and nothing more.
Naylor was far from happy. In the course of the debrief, he variously referred to Nine as a goddamn traitor and a scheming son-of-a-bitch. Naylor scratched his pock-marked skin and his lazy eye was twitching overtime as he addressed Kentbridge and Seventeen. He’d entrusted them with the task of bringing Nine to heel and so far they’d failed. He made his disappointment clear to them.
“He’s tricky, sir,” Kentbridge said defensively. Like Seventeen, Kentbridge hated having to answer to anyone – especially Naylor. He glanced at Seventeen then back to his superior. “We’re going to need a little more time.”
“Time is a luxury we don’t have, Tommy! We need that location now,” Naylor said, referring to the newly discovered treasure hoard in the Philippines. He wasn’t about to refer to the co-ordinates Nine had or Yamashita’s Gold in front of anyone outside Omega.
The two French agents present glanced at each other, concerned. They sensed vital information was being withheld from them. The secretiveness of their guests was doing noth
ing for their mistrust of their opposites or for their inbred dislike of Americans. The lack of consultation – or even any acknowledgement of their presence – irked them also.
At the same time, inside the car that had followed Kentbridge to DST headquarters, Cho-Wu listened in to the Omega agents' discussion with the aid of a listening device. Naylor’s voice came through loud and clear. “Sebastian knows too much. We either need to reel him in or terminate him, but he must not trade with the Chinese.”
Cho-Wu grew alert as he realized they were after the same American agent he would soon be doing business with. He scribbled furiously on a note pad, writing down the name Sebastian as he continued to eavesdrop.
#
Minutes later, Kentbridge, Naylor, Seventeen and the French agents watched a monitor inside the DST meeting room. It screened security camera footage taken of Nine and Isabelle in the mall the day before. Naylor was as baffled as his fellow Omegans as they watched Nine using Isabelle as a hostage. None of them had any idea why such a well-trained operative would be resorting to such desperate tactics.
Naylor suspected Nine had lost his mind and he said as much. Kentbridge knew better. Yes, Nine seemed disturbed, but he also appeared as determined and well-measured as ever. Kentbridge had always known his favorite orphan had been emotionally fragile, but he was also aware it would take a hell of a lot to break his will. It was his assessment Nine was still a long way from breaking point.
The security footage ended with Nine diving on top of Isabelle in the elevator to shield her from the gunfire he feared would come their way. One of the French Intelligence agents switched the monitor off.
“This girl is like Patty Hearst all over again!” Naylor observed.
The Omega director’s lazy eye was causing the French agents some consternation. They were sure his last comment had been directed at one of his American companions, but he seemed to be looking at them.
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