by Tom Clancy
“What is this?” asked Valentina, standing outside their car. She was furious that Moreau et al had lied to them about his whereabouts and probably more. “You were just talking to Kim on the computer, and she said you were back at Fort Meade.”
“First, let’s slow down, Nurse Ratched — and speaking of which, I’ve got your uniforms and IDs in the trunk.”
“Nurse who?”
“I don’t believe it. Are you going to stand there and tell me you have not seen One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest?”
Valentina frowned. “It’s a movie?”
“Of course it is, sunshine!”
“I am not familiar with that movie, either,” said Noboru.
“Aw, you boys and girls got to be kidding me. When you’re drunk or bored sometime, Google it. For now, listen up.”
Valentina snickered. “For the second time, why are you here?”
“I’m getting to that. You’ll be coordinating directly with me right here in Reims, but we want them to think I’m at 3E headquarters.”
“We want who to think?”
“Kovac.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“He’s got his eyes and ears all over us. Grim and I decided that it was more important for me to work hands on this time around. So I brought you the gear and my shining personality, and I’ll be staying right here while you track Fisher. You’ll have a secure, encrypted link directly to me, and I’ll update Grim. Bottom line: Tech operations has just gone mobile. Hallelujah!”
Moreau stood there a moment as Valentina and Noboru faced him, resigned to their fate.
“What’s the matter, Nurse Ratched? You’re not happy to see me?”
“Thrilled.”
“Sir, I am glad to see you. I have been thinking about a nickname for you, and I wanted to share it.”
“You’re not going to use foul language, Bruce, are you?”
“No, sir. Have you seen the movie Pulp Fiction?”
“Of course I have.”
“You are Jules Winnfield, sir. You are a black hit man, but you don’t have the Jheri curls. When you retire, you will walk the earth like Caine in Kung Fu.”
“You bet your ass I will.” Moreau threw his arm over Noboru’s shoulder. “Just don’t call me Grasshopper. Now, come with me. I got all kinds of heavy gear bags for you to load while I supervise. Then we’re going to dress you up nice and pretty like a nurse.”
As they went to Moreau’s car, a silver four-door Mercedes (leave it to him to rent a Mercedes), Valentina activated her OPSAT and opened the channel to Hansen. “Ben?”
“You make contact with the runner?”
“Unfortunately, we did.”
“What’s wrong?”
Valentina took a deep breath and told him.
16
CENTRE HOSPITALIER UNIVERSITAIRE REIMS, FRANCE
Romain Doucet was sitting up in bed, his leg wrapped in a heavy cast and elevated by a sling. His face was a mottled mess of purple and yellow bruises, and somewhere amid those venous flowers was a pair of dark, narrow eyes. Valentina could only imagine how much swelling there had been, but some of it had subsided. Admittedly, it was unnerving to see a man this imposing as battered as he was; it suggested that his attacker was either bigger and stronger or a whole lot smarter. Valentina suspected the latter to be true. Indeed, Doucet was a giant of a Frenchman, over six feet, to be sure, with a chest like the front bumper of a pickup truck. You wouldn’t call the things at the ends of his arms hands, but paws, and his pitch-black hair was matted as though he’d been rolling around on a thick carpet.
Behind Valentina, at a nurses’ station walled in by glass, Noboru was presenting the four duty nurses with a stack of bogus paperwork he’d brought in from central administration. Noboru’s English was very good, but his French was poor, which only added to the mayhem. The nurses were gaping at the reports, which included new work schedules for each of them, new sets of duties, and enough other incendiary material to keep them diverted for a week, let alone five minutes. The geeks back home must have had a good time composing those documents — geeks enjoy wielding their intellectual power to piss people off. Valentina ought to know — she was in their club and just needed to make other people realize that.
For now, though, she was back to the same old pathetic ploy: using sex as a weapon to get what the team needed. She undid one more button on her uniform, opened the glass door, and sashayed into Doucet’s room.
Playing on the TV was a rerun of Magnum, P.I. with Tom Selleck. Magnum’s lips were moving, his mustache fluttering, but French was coming out of his mouth in a rapid fire that made him at once appear feminine and ridiculous. Doucet glanced away from the screen and abruptly beamed at her. The pig liked what he saw. “You’re a new one.”
“That’s right, Mr. Doucet. My name’s Nurse Ratched.”
In fact, that was the name Moreau had placed on her ID badge; he’d planned that from the beginning. Valentina reached around and drew the curtain around his bed… so they’d have privacy.
Doucet raised his brows. “What do we have to do now?”
“That’s up to you, sweetheart.” Valentina did her finger-to-the-lips thing that all the dogs loved.
The look in his eyes made her want to put a shotgun to his crotch and pull the trigger.
But she had work to do.
“You’re not a real nurse.”
“And I thought you were a stupid man.”
“Who hired you?”
“They did. They want me to make you feel better.”
He started to chuckle. “They’re good friends.” He stopped and winced through the pain.
“Oh, my poor baby. What happened to you?” She crossed around the bed and stared at his leg.
“Skiing accident.”
“That’s not what they told me.” Valentina undid another button, leaned back, and showed him more of her cleavage.
He gasped and said, “What did they tell you?”
“Something about a very bad man who came to see you.” She moved toward the bed, leaned down, undid the clip and let her long hair fall into his face.
He breathed in the scent and said, “I’m going to find him. And I’m going to kill him.”
She pulled back. “You’re not afraid?”
“No.”
“You’re a strong man. I wish we weren’t here. I wish we were someplace else.”
“Me, too.”
“This man who did this to you… he must be so strong.”
“No, he’s just a smart bastard. Very smart.”
“How’re you going to find him?”
“I’m not sure.”
“In my business, I know a lot of people on the street. Maybe I can help you. Is there a reward?”
“There could be. But are you going to keep talking or take off your clothes?”
Valentina smiled and undid the rest of the buttons on her uniform. She moved back toward the bed and pressed her cleavage into his face. Doucet groaned softly. She rolled her eyes. She pulled back once more and said, “What does this guy look like?”
“White guy. About six feet. Longish hair. Unshaven for a week. His French was excellent, but something tells me he’s an American.”
“That could be anyone. You’ll never find him. Maybe a police artist could draw a picture for me.”
“We’re not using the police. I do this my way.”
“Okay. I’m sorry to talk about this. I’m here to make you feel better.”
“Then climb up on top of me, and take my pulse.”
She grinned, and just as he reached out to grab her wrist, the curtain wrenched open, and in walked a gray- haired, potbellied nurse who took one look at Valentina’s exposed black bra and screamed, “Who are you? Not another stripper on my floor! Get out! We’ve banned you people, you should know!”
Noboru was standing behind the woman, giving Valentina the high sign with his eyes.
She quickly folded her blouse c
losed and slipped past the nurse, dropping in behind Noboru. They raced to the end of the hall, turned right, and hit the stairwell.
“I’m sorry, Maya,” Noboru said as they charged down. “One of the nurses saw you close the curtain. I tried to distract her.”
“It’s all right. I got what we need. It was definitely Fisher.”
“He didn’t touch you, did he?”
She gritted her teeth. “Don’t worry about me.”
They reached the ground floor, and Valentina took a few seconds to finish closing her blouse.
“I am worried about you,” Noboru insisted.
“Why?”
“Because my life depends on you.”
“All right, I guess that’s a pretty good reason. Maybe…” She winked.
“That was kind of fun.” Noboru looked at her, then smiled weakly.
“Keep working on that smile. It’s still rusty.”
They pushed through the heavy exit door and started across the parking lot. “Ben?” Valentina called after activating her OPSAT. “No surprise: Doucet got his ass kicked by Fisher. I just wish Fisher had finished the job. That guy is scum.”
* * *
As Hansen cruised down another impossibly narrow street, he told Valentina to meet them back at the hotel. He and Ames wanted to make one more pass by Boutin’s apartment.
They had a couple of surveillance images of the man taken several years ago. Abelard Boutin was pushing sixty, and if you described him as being taller than five feet four, you were being generous. He squinted like a rodent through dark-rimmed glasses and attempted to cover his freckled and pockmarked skull with all of sixteen long, gray hairs in the classic comb-over style that fooled no one but has remained inexplicably popular for centuries. He was a gnome, a savant whose singular talent lay in the perfect artistry of his work.
And after all these years and all that work, the best he’d been able to afford was a basement apartment in Reims. Was he hoarding all the money? Helping to support someone? Or did he have certain… weaknesses… that siphoned off his income? These were interesting questions, but all Hansen needed to know was, first, had Fisher gone to see Boutin (as it seemed he had), and, second, did Boutin know where Fisher was headed.
Boutin’s apartment was located just west of the center of Reims, on the corner of rue de Vesles and Marx Dormoy, behind a clothing store and several other storefronts. Hansen was glad they’d made a dry run, since there was no parking at all on rue de Vesles because of some road construction and repair. There were signs posted up and down the street, with red railings fencing off the torn-up cobblestones. The maps had not revealed that.
A tunnel-like alley called the passage Saint-Jacques lay between a small pharmacy and several ATM machines. A wrought-iron gate with a security touch pad secured the entrance to the tunnel, and that gate stood in sharp, contemporary relief against the passage’s ornate stone arch, which made you feel as if you were walking through someplace very ancient and somehow sacred. Hansen and Ames had already decided that at least one, possibly two, of them would gain entrance to the courtyard beyond, either by hopping the gate or picking the lock. A second inspection revealed motion detectors, so those and the lock would have to be neutralized.
Hansen took them around the block one last time. Within the courtyard near Boutin’s apartment was an old church, and behind it an ornate carousel ride with bright lights and gleaming horses. Once again more fences lay between them and the courtyard where Boutin’s apartment was located, so entrance from the north would also require some climbing or lock picking. No big challenge. Just a nuisance.
Ames finished taking his pictures and lowered the camera. “You see the ass on the girl back there?”
“No, I was too busy reconnoitering the target and considering our plans for tonight.”
Ames shrugged. “You missed quite an ass.”
“Where in the training manual for covert field operatives does it say that you need to be loud, the class clown, and the center of attention?”
“Dude, it’s in the footnotes. You don’t read the footnotes?”
Hansen snorted. “If you don’t take this operation seriously—”
“Benjamin? Are you trying to seduce me?”
“Shut up! Listen to me. The quips are just irritating and they need to stop.”
“Whatever you say.”
“And leave the women alone. Maya will kick your ass, and I won’t stop her.”
“I’m just trying to have some fun. You people are so uptight. We could die out here because, yeah, maybe this whole thing’s a setup. Maybe Grim’s a traitor. Maybe we’re being used, so we might as well have a little fun along the way — because you know what, Mr. Hansen? Life’s too goddamned short. All it takes is one little spark, one little flame, and it’s all burned away… ”
“You don’t think I know about that?” Hansen asked, wishing he could fix Ames with a hard look but keeping his eyes on the road. “We’re all spies here. You found out Gillespie slept with Fisher the same way I found out about your family dying in a fire, about that Zippo you carry around, about your little problem with anger management. I even read Fisher’s report about you and your bad temperament.”
Ames began shaking his head and laughing. “You really think you know me, huh? You really do!”
“You’re about as uncomplicated as they come.”
“All right. I’ll accept that. Just a blue-collar kind of guy…”
Hansen stole a glance at the man and just sighed.
THIRD ECHELON SITUATION ROOM FORT MEADE, MARYLAND
Anna Grimsdóttir stiffened as the door opened and in strode Nicholas Andrew Kovac, deputy director. Kovac had an expression on his face that he assumed would intimidate her — but he should have thought again.
She nodded curtly at the regal-looking man, his hair the color of sea salt and perfectly coiffed, his eyes stunningly blue and suggesting he’d had no trouble with the ladies in his youth. His suits were tailor made, his shoes professionally shined, his ties picked out by his personal assistant. His watch cost more than the average commuter car, and, speaking of cars, he drove several different exotics to work, taking turns between the Lotus, the Porsche, and the “Lambo.” It was all remarkably egocentric, and far too flaunting for Grim’s taste, and Kovac had already inspired a legion of haters among the low-level analysts. But the deputy director didn’t care. He was and would forever be terse, demanding, and unflinching, and he had on more than one occasion lectured his subordinates about how hard he’d worked to reach his goals.
He was an ass. No two ways about it.
In fact, while he knew most people referred to her as Grim, he never once called her that, relying only upon Ms. Grimsdóttir, spoken in the tone of a private schoolteacher addressing his unfortunate pupil.
“Hello, Ms. Grimsdóttir.”
She winced and fired back, “How you doing, Nick,” in her best New York accent, as though addressing one of the boys.
He took a long breath. “I’ve come for an update on Fisher.”
“I would’ve been happy to call or e-mail you… ”
“You still think Fisher is in Reims?”
“We do. The team’s already begun its investigation.”
“But Fisher could be long gone.”
“He’s not.”
“You’re certain? Why?”
“Because I know Sam. If he made a mistake, he’ll wait around, shake the tree, see what falls out.”
“Well, I expect daily, even hourly, updates.”
“Of course.”
“Where’s Mr. Moreau?”
“We had a problem with one of the servers and he’s down there supervising.”
“Well, tell him I want to see him in my office before the end of the day.”
“I will.” Oh, this is going to get interesting, she thought.
He started for the door, hesitated, turned back. “Ms. Grimsdóttir? We don’t have to like or trust each other to do the goo
d work of our country.”
“But it would make things easier.”
“What position would you have me take at a time like this”
“A supportive one, sir.”
“You have my support.”
She took a long breath. “But not your trust.”
“When Fisher is taken out of the equation, we’ll all be able to breathe easier.”
“If only it hadn’t come to this.”
“But it has. And I would hope that you’ve instructed your team to neutralize the problem with extreme prejudice.”
“Is there any other way?”
He winked. “Good girl.”
She glowered at him as he turned and strode arrogantly toward the door.
17
GRAND HÔTEL TEMPLIERS REIMS, FRANCE
Kimberly Gillespie had just finished an encrypted text chat with Mr. Moreau when the man himself walked into the hotel room, holding his own key card and smiling like a bull shark.
Gillespie looked at the LCD screen, then at him, and had a WTF moment before finally opening her mouth.
But he beat her to the punch. “What’s up, Pippi? You done chatting with me?”
“What the hell?”
“Relax. You’ve been working with one of my young apprentices. He’s just a wannabe. That’s why it’s just text and no video.”
“Okay, that’s supposed to enlighten me… how?”
“You’re thinking too hard. You just keep working with the electronic me, and the NSA will be happy. Meantime, I’ll also be here, and we’ll set up some encryption of our own.”
“I wish I knew what the hell you’re talking about.”
“Put away that big brain and just close your eyes and ride the wave… ”
The door opened and in walked Hansen and Ames. Neither of them was surprised to see the operations manager, further confusing Gillespie.
“Are you working out of a room here or somewhere else?” Hansen asked Moreau.
“I’ve got a room here.”
“Wait a minute. You knew about this?” asked Gillespie.
Hansen shrugged. “I should’ve called you. Relax.”
Gillespie folded her hands over her chest. “Okay, I’m listening.”