by Simon Sloane
“You’re on the wrong track,” Khaled said. “I’m following the assassin toward Hôtel de Crillon. He’s five foot ten. Curly black hair. Dark eyes. Athletic build.”
“And who are you?” someone asked in guttural French.
“I’m Khaled Sharkhor, SSI. I witnessed the suspect detonating the bomb in a schoolgirl’s backpack.”
The radio fell silent as Khaled tried to catch up with the terrorist.
“Don’t listen to him, Yves,” someone else said, his voice clear of background noise. It was probably the dispatcher. “He must be a prankster who found a police radio. Let’s switch to frequency beta. I’ll be checking with the SSI in the meantime.”
The radio went dead.
Khaled nearly stumbled into the stall of a crêpe merchant. Of course, there was no record of Khaled’s current employment at the SSI, since Casimir-Perier had insisted on keeping it off the books. Still, Khaled was determined to catch the villain who had sacrificed an innocent schoolgirl and dozens of civilians to kill the French president. He took a deep breath and quickened his steps.
Again, his training in the camps of Al-Antqam gave him an advantage over run-of-the-mill policemen. Having joined the Parisian cell of the Brotherhood of Revenge in search of his father, Khaled knew the techniques a fugitive employed to evade capture. Although he had never found his old man amidst their ranks, he had learned how to deal with violence, exhaustion and betrayal. Subconsciously, he picked up details that French investigators filtered out in search of North African suspects. His great value to the authorities was his ability to think like the countrymen he had betrayed.
Surveying the roundabout at Place de la Concorde, Khaled was alarmed when he failed to spot the man in the kaftan. Had the suspect disappeared into one of the cars circling the square? Khaled could do nothing but adopt a leisurely stroll lest the authorities mistake him for the perpetrator.
He faked a self-assured smile as he entered Hôtel de Crillon, a luxury outfit at the corner of Rue Boissy D’Anglas.
The man in the dark cloth was standing at the reception desk.
Why would the killer risk a brush with the Crillon’s security staff? He even downed a complimentary glass of champagne. Surely, he couldn’t be a strict Muslim.
Khaled hoped the bearded man would step into one of the elevators. Then he could knock him out before they reached the first floor. But instead of taking a right turn, the slaughterer followed the concierge up the stairs.
Staying a few yards behind the two men, Khaled reached a conference room on the mezzanine level. He was panting after hurrying up the carpeted steps and along the hallway. Just as the conference room’s pine door closed, Khaled caught a glimpse of the assassin shaking hands with a balding man in a pinstriped suit.
An attaché case lay on the mahogany table in front of them.
Chapter 19
Countdown
Friday, 3:00pm CET (5:00pm local time)
Hugo looked deep into Diana’s eyes. The ATF agent’s gaze lacked the ethereal softness of the girl he had once loved, but she shared her curiosity.
Diana had grasped Hugo’s calculation of the timescale in an instant. Having adjusted the timestamp of each news report for time zones, it became clear that exactly 108 hours had passed between the South Asian typhoon and the onset of the locust invasion in Egypt. Fifty-four hours later, much of North America’s grain reserves had burned in a blaze at storage facilities near Chicago. And the French president had been killed exactly twenty-seven hours later.
“What seems odd,” Diana said, “is the irregularity of these numbers.”
“One hundred and eight, fifty-four, and twenty-seven,” Hugo said. “Each number is divisible by nine, but the next one would be thirteen and a half. If the pattern continues, the catastrophe will occur tomorrow morning at four o’clock CET.”
“That’s in the middle of the night,” Diana said. “What do you think would happen then? And where?” She ogled him as if she was looking for him to self-incriminate by providing details of the unfolding tragedy.
He shrugged. “Maybe another blaze. As I said, that’s when arsonists strike.” And yet, he felt as if they might witness a new kind of calamity. There was no obvious regional pattern, but then Hugo thought of something as he took another look at the corn price curve. Its ascent was gathering speed. What would happen once the countdown ran out? If the trend continued, the line would break through the chart’s upper border and rise to infinity?
“You look worried,” Diana said.
“The string of disasters has a clearly defined endpoint,” Hugo said, extrapolating the timeline on the screen with an electronic stylus. He paused for a final cross-check before he announced the deadline. “It’s tomorrow at five thirty in the evening, CET.”
“How do you know that?” Diana asked, looking even more suspicious than before. But then it was clear she trusted her superiors in Vauxhall rather than her suspect.
“Remember,” Hugo said, “each incident only takes half the time of the previous one to unfold. Now start adding up all the reciprocal powers of two!”
“This is one, plus a half, plus a quarter, and so on,” Diana said.
Hugo nodded. “And all those taken together will approach the number two.”
“You’re right. I should have paid more attention in maths.” Rather than flirting with her memory lapse, Diana seemed a bit ashamed of herself.
“Don’t worry,” Hugo said, appreciating her seriousness. “Now multiply two by thirteen and a half, and you’ll get the magic number again: twenty-seven.”
“Okay, I believe you. But ….” She still didn’t seem happy with the mathematical explanation when she took a pen and paper and wrote down the series of events for herself.
Thursday, 22 April, 5:30pm CET South Asian typhoon
+108 hours
Tuesday, 27 April, 5:30am CET Locusts on the Nile
+54 hours
Thursday, 29 April, 11:30am CET Chicago blaze
+27 hours
Friday, 30 April, 2:30pm CET Paris bomb attack
+13.5 hours
Saturday, 1 May, 4:00am CET ???
+6.75 hours
Saturday 1 May, 10:45am CET ???
+3.375 hours
Saturday 1 May, 14:07am CET ???
+1.6875 hours
Saturday 1 May, 15:48am CET ???
“I get it.” Diana dropped her pen in frustration. “It’ll be all over by tomorrow afternoon. But what then?”
Hugo took a deep breath. Then he slowly shook his head.
Chapter 20
The Fist Of God
Friday, 3:15pm CET
Khaled hid behind a corner on the other side of the corridor. He flashed a smile at the cleaning lady, who pushed her trolley past him.
When no one left the conference room, he thought they had tricked him. Was there a second exit? If only he could call for reinforcements! But Casimir-Perier himself had insisted on keeping Khaled’s employment confidential. No one would listen to him if he pretended to be part of the president’s protective detail.
Maybe things would be different if Alexander Popov was still with the SSI, but the Russian hadn’t been able to control his zipper. Khaled still couldn’t believe Alexander had been stupid enough to share state secrets with a Chinese seductress after a vodka-drenched night on a rooftop bar in Barcelona. His sole ally in the SSI was gone, and no one could vouch for him now that the president was dead.
Khaled was close to giving up when the North African reappeared, a beige attaché case chained to his wrist. It seemed to exert a considerable pull on the perpetrator’s arm. Had he been paid in gold bullion?
The bomber looked around to check if someone had followed him. Then he traversed the corridor and descended the stairs with the elegance of a prowling leopard. Khaled had never seen him before, but hundreds of thousands of families of Maghreb origin lived in Paris. Some had carried French passports for generations.
The man in
the suit remained inside. Knowing he was the bigger fish, Khaled summoned his courage and walked into the conference room.
It was empty.
Frantically, he looked around for the sinister figure. He even examined the antique cupboards for a hidden door, but there was none.
Khaled prayed to Allah for guidance. Where would he find the moneyman behind the attack? But the Almighty remained silent, as he had so often during the past years. Maybe Khaled had spent too much time in the Occident, losing touch with the morals of his youth. Surely, Allah wouldn’t have deserted him if he prayed more. But nowadays even Khaled’s visits to mosques were performed in the spirit of treachery. He regularly denounced the hate preachers and Al-Antqam recruiters to the SSI, preventing them from doing even more damage to a religion that was still not trusted in the West.
Khaled closed his eyes, trying to concentrate. When he opened them again, he found what he was looking for. The wind had pushed one of the windows open.
Khaled moved the curtain aside and spotted the businessman walking up Rue Boissy D’Anglas. For a moment, he turned around to look back at the conference room window, but Khaled’s glasses failed to recognise him.
Why had he taken such an unusual route out of the hotel? At his age, the puppeteer had risked hurting himself by jumping from the first-floor window.
Khaled climbed the ledge in an attempt to pursue the criminal, but he was knocked off his feet before he got a grip of the window frame.
His ears nearly burst at the explosion. Shattered glass rained down on him when Hôtel de Crillon trembled as if shaken by the fist of God.
Khaled fell when a blunt object hit the back of his head.
Chapter 21
Plague
Friday, 3:30pm CET (5:30pm local time)
Diana was glad to have something to show for herself when her boss contacted them again. Hugo had determined that the countdown would run out twenty-seven hours from Casimir-Perier’s murder. He hadn’t even used his phone or his computer to calculate the sequence of inverted squares. But then he might have taken a perverted pleasure in unveiling his very own masterplan to the elite of the British secret service.
“What do you suggest we do now?” Diana asked, hoping for another lead.
“We need to get a better idea of how it will happen,” Hugo said. “So far, we’re running behind, trying to make sense of what has occurred. But then commodity exchanges will close for the weekend, hours before the next disaster is due.”
“If the sequence remains intact,” Diana said, “there must be something else than corn prices then.” Once again, she was intrigued by Hugo’s deductive skills. Withdrawing from his piercing black eyes, she reminded herself that he might be a talented actor trying to bury his scheme beneath a fabricated story.
Hugo cradled his chin as he looked at the timeline. “Droughts,” he mumbled. “Locusts, storms, blazes, murders.”
“Are you thinking of the biblical plagues?” Diana asked.
“You know what the Bible says about the last plague … Darkness.”
She cocked her head. “Paris was different though. A politician was targeted, not an agricultural supply chain or something.”
Hugo laughed. “I don’t think Casimir-Perier’s death is a reference to the biblical frog plague.”
Diana’s chuckle froze when Control reappeared on the communications screen. Her boss must have spotted her unprofessional camaraderie with the ATF’s prisoner.
“So, Dr Hyde, you spent most of your life in Paris, didn’t you?”
Hugo nodded. “I did. My father was the deputy ambassador of Britain in France. And my mother—”
“Oh,” Diana said, trying to gauge Control’s angle of questioning. “Why are you not dining at the Ritz with your old man’s diplomatic chums? What happened?”
Hugo groaned, and Diana could tell he resented her attempt to get back into her superior’s good books with her mockery of his background.
“Well,” a shadow flickered across his face, “the Foreign Office stopped trusting my father’s judgment when he fell in love with an archaeology student barely half his age. And when my mother got pregnant—”
“I’ve read your dossier,” Control said in a manner that even Diana considered rude. “And as much as I empathise with your years as an orphan, I can’t let you off the hook. So, tell me, Dr Hyde, when was the last time you talked to Christian Casimir-Perier?”
“Why would I talk to him?”
“Was it when the deceased president gave you ten million Euros in unmarked bearer bonds?”
Diana looked at the screen as if Control had lost her mind. It wasn’t the first time her assertions had raised eyebrows. Her nicotine dependency was only one sign of how she struggled with the burden of responsibility.
“I ….” Hugo looked at the ceiling like a deceiver who had been caught.
Diana felt disconcerted. The man she had only just begun to trust was involved in something shady, something she had failed to spot.
This time, Control had him cornered.
Chapter 22
Masterpiece
Friday, 3:45pm CET pm
Holding the back of his head in pain, Khaled regained consciousness. He wondered how long he had passed out. He looked up and saw the ornamented ceiling crack.
Panic closed his throat when he felt a drizzle of dislodged cement raining down on his face. Damn! He was about to get crushed to death in a luxury hotel.
Surely, Allah would condemn Khaled to the realm of Shaitan if he were to die now. The only thing that could salvage his soul was avenging the man he had let down. Khaled had to disentangle the conspiracy behind Casimir-Perier’s murder, starting with the pensioner in the dark suit who had met the assassin before blasting him to pieces.
Pulling himself up the ledge, Khaled stepped onto the parapet in front of the broken window. Holding his breath, he jumped, praying his spine wouldn’t crack.
Khaled’s feet hurt, and his back nearly gave in when he landed on the pavement. Panicked pedestrians fled from the scene, running away from him. He rushed past Buddha Bar, trying to locate the gaunt businessman. Where could he have gone?
At last he saw the pinstriped suit again. The instigator of both bomb attacks had turned left on Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. Now he walked slowly toward the Elysée Palace. The perpetrator must have hidden somewhere nearby, waiting for his appointment at the nerve centre of national politics.
Khaled couldn’t pursue him since there was no area in Paris with more policemen. The good news was that the cops would stop and search the villain at the gates. But the sleazy figure was waved through the checkpoint without a glance at his passport!
With the swagger of a cowboy, the thin-haired man approached the residence of the man whose death he had arranged.
Maybe Casimir-Perier himself had known his murderer. In fact, Khaled was quite sure of it. The ultimate betrayal was to kill a man one knew intimately.
Khaled regretted setting foot in the Elysée Palace only once before. He should have paid more attention during his visit to the slain incumbent’s office. Now he failed to remember any potential weaknesses in palatial security that would allow him to pursue the conspirator beyond the wrought-iron gates.
Suddenly, the malefactor spun around with the agility of a much younger man and looked at the smoke arising from Hôtel de Crillon. A crooked smile spread across his vulture-like face. He reminded Khaled of an ageing artist contemplating his final masterpiece, deeply contented by what he was leaving behind.
On instinct Khaled blinked twice to take a photo with his high-tech spectacles. Then he spoke Sarah Parker’s name to send the picture to her servers in London.
Chapter 23
Geek-O-Matixx
Friday, 4:00pm CET pm (6:00pm local time)
Hugo couldn’t believe the degree of stupidity at ATF headquarters. For some reason, Control still considered him the originator of catastrophes across four continents. It was unfortunate, si
nce they were losing valuable time they should have spent identifying the culprit behind the accelerating countdown. “Why are we landing?” he asked as the desert appeared beneath them.
“We’re refuelling before returning to Paris,” Diana said. She frequently consulted her mobile to check for the latest orders from Vauxhall.
“And what are we supposed to do in France?” As Diana had pointed out, the assassination of Casimir-Perier was different from previous incidents.
“Vauxhall sees some sort of a magic triangle,” Diana said, “connecting you, Christian Casimir-Perier and his political opponent.” She pointed to the on-screen news coverage. The headline read, “Louvre Attack Rattling Markets as Al-Antqam Takes Credit for President’s Murder.” It was followed by an even more ominous news story: “Jean-Marc Tanguy: The New Front Runner?”
Hugo groaned. In any other country, Tanguy would be damaged goods after his perversions had been revealed. In Paris, however, his lifestyle wasn’t indicative of a bad character but of strength and virility.
“Are you saying you’ve never had anything to do with Casimir-Perier and Tanguy?” Diana enquired when Hugo remained silent.
“It’s simple,” he replied. “Casimir-Perier paid me to compensate for damages done to my firm by the French secret service while Tanguy was prime minister.”
“Really?” Diana raised an eyebrow. “Why didn’t you say this before?”
Hugo laughed dryly. “Your boss rushed off to another meeting before I had a chance to explain. Can’t you just tell her it’s all a big misunderstanding?”