Ramos snorted. “Yeah, probably not.”
“They must be serious about killing me.”
“Hmm... either that, or they have something against your luggage.”
I let out a shaky breath and chuckled. “I know, and now these jeans are torn too. What am I going to do? This is terrible. I finally get my clothes back, and now they’re ruined.” I knew I was being overly dramatic, but I couldn’t stop the tears that filled my eyes. What was wrong with me?
“Looks like someone might have to go shopping... here... in Paris,” he said, his voice full of warmth.
“Oh... yeah. That’s right.” Suddenly feeling better, I blinked the tears away and glanced up at him with a smile on my face. “I guess getting my luggage shot up isn’t so bad. But if my chocolates are ruined, we have to go back and get some more.”
He chuckled, thinking it hadn’t bothered me to eat them off the floor. What difference did a bullet or two make? I glanced up at him with murder in my eyes. “Whoa, babe,” he said. Our faces were close enough that he could steal a kiss from me, and there was nothing I could do about it. My breath caught, but I couldn’t move away.
Just then, the officer slid into the front seat. That broke the spell, and I pulled away from Ramos with a guilty jerk. I sat up straight, but my heart raced, and I had trouble breathing. Satisfaction came from Ramos. He loved to rattle me, but he was also sorry he hadn’t kissed me. Maybe next time.
I shook my head and turned my gaze to him with a wry smile. “I don’t think so.”
He chuckled again, glad I wasn’t crying anymore. “Spoilsport.”
After a short drive, we pulled into an entrance blocked by a tall, iron gate. Two officers stood guard, and one of them hurried over to our driver. They spoke and, in the midst of all that French, I heard my name. The guard glanced into the back seat at me and Ramos, before nodding and opening the gate for us to enter.
From there, our driver pulled in front of some steps leading to a double-doorway where another officer waited. We got out of the car and he came toward us. “Bonjour Madam, Monsieur,” he said. “I will take you to Inspecteur Dumont.”
“Thanks,” I said. The officer who drove us set my luggage in front of me, and Ramos picked it up while I held tight to Blake’s binder. We walked through the double-doors into a marble hallway and stopped in front of the elevators.
After riding to the fifth floor, we exited and turned down another hallway. One side of the wall was made with glass, and we could see into a room filled with people, desks, and computers. At the front, several large screens with different views of the city sat on display.
A door opened at the end of the hall, and Gabriel stepped out. Seeing us, he hurried forward, his brows creased with concern. “It seems as though the terrorists found you,” he said. “I’m grateful you are still alive. But what is this? You have injuries.” He spoke to the officer in what I could only interpret as a scolding, then turned back to us. “We have an infirmary here. One of our medical staff will check you over.”
“Oh... it’s just a few bumps and bruises,” I said, touching my hurting forehead.
“No... I will not hear of it. Please, you will follow me.” He led us around the corner and down another hallway to a door with a glass window in it. The door opened to a white room with an examination table and curtains, much like a doctor’s office. A woman in a white lab coat sat in front of a desk and glanced up as we entered.
After they spoke, Gabriel turned to us. “She will attend you and then bring you back to me.” At my nod, he quickly left. I glanced at Ramos and shrugged. We both took turns getting our scrapes cleaned and bandaged. I even got a little butterfly closure over my cut and antiseptic ointment for my knees. She gave us each a bottle of water, then led us back to Gabriel, who stood in front of the large screens looking at street camera video footage.
I recognized the scene as footage of the car driving down the street with guns pointing out the window and shooting at us. One of the other screens showed footage of our car blowing up. They backed up the footage to the point where we’d just arrived at Blake’s apartment, watching for the person who’d planted the bomb.
That person came into view wearing a large jacket with the collar turned up and a knit hat covering his head and obscuring his face. Even when they stopped the footage, he kept his back toward the camera, and there was no chance of seeing his face. One minute he was beside the car, and the next, he was walking away.
“Ah... there you are,” Gabriel said. “As you can see, we are looking for clues. Please come to my office and tell me what you know about all of this.”
It didn’t take long to fill him in since he’d seen most of it from the street cameras. “The bomb must have been hooked up to the electrical system.” I knew that because I’d heard it from Ramos’ thoughts. “I have Blake’s notes about Cypher in this binder. Maybe it will help. Blake thought it might, anyway.”
“Of course,” Gabriel said. “We have also been watching our video feeds of the metro stations for signs of the bioweapon. The Conference on Climate Change begins the day after tomorrow, so he may have already planted the bomb and set it on a timer.
“I have a plan in place to check the ventilation systems of the entire metro, but I was hoping for more clarification. Do you have any more... uh... insight... into this for me? Are you still thinking the weapon will be released into the ventilation system or somewhere in a metro station?”
I thought back to my confrontation with Cypher and wished I would have asked a question about the weapon, then we’d have more to go on. I shook my head. “No, I’m sorry. All I got was a grated vent at the top of a tiled wall.”
Gabriel sat up. “So you are sure it was a vent?”
“Yes.”
“Then you are probably right about the metro. Let’s go back into the surveillance room. You may leave your luggage here. I’ll have them show you some footage of the metro, and you can see if it matches your premonitions.”
Back in the room, a tech guy brought up an image of the walls in a metro station. The security camera panned back and forth until resting on a silver vent at the top of a wall. “Yes. That’s it,” I said. “I’m sure of it.”
“Then we must move fast,” Gabriel said. Turning to another man, he gave the order to put his plan into action. The man left, and Gabriel turned to the techs in the room, shouting orders. One by one, the screens were filled with actual-time footage of the metro system.
Some screens were split into as many as twenty different views, and I knew this wasn’t going to be easy. The Paris metro was huge. In fact, finding the correct ventilation system would be like finding a needle in a haystack.
Chapter 9
Gabriel turned to me. “The ventilation system is not easy to get into, but it is large enough that it moves about three-hundred thousand cubic meters of air. If someone were to release a bioweapon into that...” he shook his head. “It would be catastrophic.”
“Maybe you should shut it down,” I said.
“I have thought of it. But the corridors into these ventilation systems are locked down, so we should find them first. But, if we have not found it by morning, I will shut the system down and turn off the vents until we do.” He hoped I was right if it came to that, since he’d get the blame for shutting down the entire city of Paris. Hey! He thought that in English.
“Better safe than sorry, I always say.”
“Oui,” he agreed. “Now, I have something to ask of you. Since you have said that you know who Cypher is, I would like you to look at some photos we have on file, and see if there is a match. If not, I would like you to give a description to an artist. Is that acceptable?”
“Yes. I can do that.”
“Good. Come with me. You can use my office.”
We marched back to his office, and Gabriel offered me the chair at his desk, while he brought up the file of known terrorists onto his computer.
“If any of them look familiar, I wa
nt to know. I will be in the surveillance room.”
After he left, I gave Blake’s binder to Ramos. “Here, why don’t you look through this? See if there’s anything on Cypher that might help us identify him.”
We both got busy, and an hour passed without any luck. I finished the file and sighed, discouraged that I couldn’t find one match to any of the men in Cypher’s group. Ramos glanced at me with raised brows. “Anything?”
“Nope,” I said. “You?”
“I think there’s something here we might be able to use. Blake has been tracking Cypher’s activities for the last year. He thinks he might be ex-military, with a specialty in bomb-making. But here’s where it gets interesting. He found a unit where one of the men went by the name of Cypher. It says here that he was killed in Afghanistan eight years ago.”
“Is there a picture of him?”
“Yeah.”
I stumbled my way over to Ramos and glanced at the photo of Cypher, then sighed with disappointment. “That’s not him.” Ramos turned the page, and there was a photo of seven men standing in front of a Humvee.
“How about any of these guys?” he asked.
The photo was a little grainy. All seven of the soldiers were standing with their helmets on and guns at their sides. None of them looked familiar. I couldn’t even pick out the real Cypher at first. Then I found him on the end. “Does Blake say what happened to these guys?”
“Yeah. The report says they were all killed.”
“That’s too bad.” I took the photo back over to my chair and sat down. “What happened?”
“Let’s see... it says they got pinned down in the mountains between a village and the Taliban forces who had taken refuge in nearby caves. It looks like both sides started shooting at them. Blake notes that a lot of the report was redacted, but none of them made it out alive. There’s another note here in the margin.” Ramos turned the page. “It says, ‘dead by friendly fire.’” He glanced at me, thinking it was more common than we knew.
I shook my head. “That’s so sad.” I studied each face once again, trying to picture them without a helmet and with several days’ growth of beard. Still couldn’t see anything.
Ramos shuffled through the report. “Wait, here’s another photo. They look older in this one. It must have been taken closer to the time they all died.”
Once again, I hurried to his side. These men looked totally different. The boyish youth of the first photo was replaced by hardened jaws and steely eyes. This time, their helmets were off, and their faces remained unshaven.
My breath caught. “That’s him.” I pointed to the man standing to the right, and a little apart from the others. “He’s Cypher. His hair is longer now, but that’s definitely him.”
Our gazes met, then Ramos turned the photo over to read the names on the back. “Trevor Olsen.” He set the photo down and let out a breath. “It says they were all buried as a unit at Arlington Cemetery. So how is he still alive?”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “And what happened to him? What made him turn? Could he have been captured by the Taliban? Did he put his dog tags on someone else’s remains? But why would he do that? What could have turned him into a terrorist? Do you think it was the friendly fire?”
“I don’t know. It could be any of those things,” Ramos replied. “But that doesn’t excuse him for what he is today. Remember the man you met last night? The one who wanted to kill you and left Blake for dead? That’s not the same person as this guy.”
“You’re right. So what do we do now?”
“We could tell Dumont. Let him get the word out. If the bomb is set to go off soon, he’s probably long gone... except for one thing.”
I nodded. “Me.”
“He probably wants you dead, so he might stick around.”
“Yeah, but once I’ve identified him, and his picture is shown all over the world as the terrorist, Cypher, it won’t matter if I’m dead or alive. Don’t you think he’ll just disappear and hide or something? He could forget all about me.”
Ramos shook his head. “I don’t think so. Not someone like him. He might hide for a while, but he’d always come for you. Maybe not now, or in a few weeks, but someday he’d find you.” He was thinking that no one in my family was safe with him out there. From the notes he’d read about Cypher’s long list of crimes, from kidnappings to assassinations, he knew he’d kill anyone who got in his way.
My mouth went dry. “That doesn’t sound good.”
“Maybe there’s a different way to solve this.”
“I’m all ears.”
“We don’t tell Dumont all of the details yet. If Cypher is still here, we try to draw him out before he knows his cover is blown.”
“With me for bait?” Just thinking about it sent my stomach into a queasy knot.
“Not exactly. We know Blake’s driver, Louis, is involved. Maybe I should pay him a visit.”
Did I say I liked having Ramos on my side? “That’s a great idea. Maybe we should visit Blake too? We could let him know what we’ve found out.” My brows drew together. “You know, it’s been bothering me that he’s on his own. I mean, Gabriel is helping him, but what about our country? You’d think the CIA, or whoever, would want to know one of their agents was down, right?”
Ramos shrugged. “I don’t know how it works. We could ask him when we visit.”
“Okay. But what about Gabriel? Is he going to let us leave?”
“You’ll probably have to do an artist’s rendering of Cypher first. But I think if we tell him we want to talk to Blake, we should be able to get out of here.”
“That makes sense,” I agreed. “So... about the artist’s rendering... should I be accurate with my description?”
Ramos thought that was a good question. “Yeah, I think so. If it will help Dumont find the bomb, I think you’d better. But let’s wait until we talk to Blake before we give Dumont the rest of the information.”
“Okay.” It crossed my mind that if Blake and the might of our CIA couldn’t find him, what made me think we’d be successful? Of course, we had a name and a face to go with it, so maybe that would make all the difference.
Ramos gathered up the photos and information from Blake’s file, and then put them back into the binder before nodding at me. “Let’s find Dumont.”
“Okay,” I agreed. We left the office and hurried to the surveillance room. Gabriel and his techs seemed busy, so it was a moment before he noticed us.
“Any luck?” I asked him.
“Not yet, but we have only just begun. Did you have a match?”
“No. I guess I’ll need to give my description to someone.”
“Oui,” he agreed. “I will put a call in.” He picked up his phone and made the arrangements. “The artist will meet with you in my office. If you could return?”
“Sure.” We turned back to the office to wait, but it didn’t take long before the artist joined us. Twenty minutes later, he was done with the sketch. It surprised me how much it looked like Cypher, and I had to swallow the fear just looking at him brought into my heart.
The artist called Gabriel on the phone, so we didn’t have to do that back-and-forth thing, and he soon joined us in his office. “This is him?” he asked.
“Yeah. That’s him.”
Gabriel narrowed his eyes, thinking... in English, no less... that this might be the big break they needed, especially since they hadn’t found the bomb yet.
“Uh... do you think we could visit Blake? I’d like to see how he’s doing.”
He let out a breath. “I believe so, but I am concerned for your safety. I can have someone escort you there, but we need to decide what to do. Since the terrorists were not successful to kill you, I’m afraid they will try again. We are doing what we can to track down the car, but the bio-weapon is, of course, my first priority. So, I am hesitant for you to leave.”
“Yeah, I understand,” I said. “But they have to find me first, right? And now that we know they’re l
ooking, we’ll be more careful.”
“Oui. It is my hope that we can work together to find Cypher.” His eyes narrowed with suspicion that we might try to find him on our own. “I would like your help to identify him or any of his men.”
“Sure. I’d be happy to help. After we visit with Blake, we can come back.”
“Very good,” he answered. But he wondered about our sudden interest to see Blake again so soon. Maybe it had something to do with that binder? “I will have someone take you. Please, come with me.”
I glanced at Ramos. He was thinking that it didn’t look like anything got past Dumont, so we’d have to be careful around him. He also thought I’d handled things pretty well. I glanced at him and smiled my thanks.
Soon, we were in a police car headed to the hospital. Our driver parked in a special parking space, just for the police right near the entrance, and accompanied us to Blake’s room. He was thinking in French, so I didn’t know if he was being nice, or if his orders were to not let us out of his sight.
We exited the elevator on Blake’s floor, and alarm spiked through me. The police officer left to guard Blake wasn’t sitting outside his door. Ramos registered his absence at the same time, and we both took off down the hall to Blake’s room.
My heart squeezed to find the door to his room wide open. Then dread hit me in the stomach. His bed was empty. “Where’s Blake?” I pushed back through the door to the hallway. “Where’s the man that was in this room?”
A nurse came toward me. “Qu’est-ce qui se passe?”
The police officer escorting us began to speak to her in French. Although I couldn’t understand what she said, she glanced at me with regret before motioning for a doctor. He listened to her and nodded, then raised his gaze to mine. “S'il vous plait... I will explain.” He ushered us into Blake’s empty room for privacy.
“I am sorry to tell you this. The man... Monsieur Beauchaine, he is deceased. It happened less than an hour ago. We have not had the chance to inform you... the police officer left to do so, but you must have missed him.”
Devious Minds Page 16