Stovic shook his head.
“All right.”
The van drove slowly to the Algerian section. They went back near the hotel where they had picked up Hafiz, and he directed them to a busy street three blocks away. He pointed to the second floor of the building. “Up there,” he said, finally being allowed to look out the windshield without his blindfold.
Rat looked around and didn’t like what he saw at all. Everything was wrong. Too many people, second floor, only one obvious ingress and egress, and walking into an unknown situation. “Groomer, drive around the block slowly. Let’s see what we’ve got.”
The van drove slowly. They didn’t see any obvious security. “Groomer, stay here with Root. You others, and you, Animal, come with me. We’ll be back in five minutes. If we’re not, start driving. Stay in touch on the radio,” he said pointing to the miniature receiver he had in his ear.
Rat slid the door of the van open gently, stepped down casually, with Hafiz, three others, and Stovic, and walked directly to the inside stairway running up next to the storefront.
They went to a door, and Hafiz tried it. It was locked. Rat didn’t even hesitate. He kicked in the door and pushed Hafiz inside with the rag taped around his face. The room was empty except for the model of Le Bourget. Rat couldn’t believe his eyes. He turned to Hafiz and struck him on the nose. “You liar!” he said in Arabic. “You said they didn’t tell you anything. No one would let you see this model unless you were one of them! On the inside.” His face was full of rage. “Animal!” he said to Stovic. “Put him on the deck. I’m going to finish this.”
Stovic hesitated, then grabbed Hafiz and threw him to the floor. The other two grabbed him and pinned him down. Hafiz’s eyes were full of horror. “No!”
Rat struck him in the face and tore off the tape protecting his nose. “Shut up!” He took out his razor-sharp knife, slipped his finger through the hole, and cut off Hafiz’s shirt with one rapid movement. He pulled it away from Hafiz’s chest, which was heaving with his breathing. Hafiz strained to get away from this inevitable disaster.
Rat looked at his watch. He went on in Arabic. “I don’t have time to toy with you. Either you tell me right now what I want to know, or you’re going to die a slow death.” He took the knife and ran it quickly down the length of Hafiz’s chest, cutting just deep enough to cause the blood to well out of the line and begin to run.
Hafiz took in a deep breath and held it.
“I know where every one of your arteries is. I will start out slowly now, in the hope you tell me what I need to know. If you don’t, I will leave you here with just enough cuts so that you will die in about ten minutes. And even if you get to a hospital, they won’t be able to sew you up. There won’t be enough thread. You understand?” he said.
“What do you want to know?”
“Where is Ismael?”
“I don’t know!”
“Yes, you do,” he said, as he pulled the blade down in another cut from his neck to his belt, two inches from the first cut and parallel to it. “Where is he right now? I have to talk to him.”
“I don’t know! They all left me and went other places! They didn’t tell me where they were going. I have no way of reaching them!”
“That’s too bad,” Rat said, “because that’s the only information that would have kept you alive. Feel this right here? That’s your carotid artery. If I cut that, which I might, you would die in a minute. And this? That’s your jugular. One minute. Tops. For now, though, I just want to let out a little more blood—”
“No!” Hafiz screamed.
Rat slammed the butt of his hand into Hafiz’s nose, breaking it. “Shut up! If you make any more noise, I’ll drive this knife into your brain! You understand?”
Hafiz nodded and began to cry. “I don’t know where they are. I don’t know,” he sobbed.
Rat cut another stripe on his chest.
Stovic was sickened. He had seen fights, he had seen broken bones in wrestling matches, but he had never seen anyone being cut with a knife again and again, bleeding and sobbing. He swallowed the bile in his mouth, trying to fight the nausea that was welling up. “We need to go.”
Rat heard him and nodded. He raised up on one knee. He looked at Hafiz bleeding on the floor, losing strength. He took his machine pistol from the man to his right and wiped the blade on Hafiz’s cheek, then the other side of the blade. He leaned over to Hafiz and said into his face, “Tell Ismael, be sure you tell him, that whatever happens here in Paris, whatever comes of all this, I will track him down and break his neck like a chicken. Right where the skull attaches to the spine. Right . . . there,” he said, reaching behind Hafiz and touching his neck just below his skull. “C-1. Snap. And make sure he knows that if he thinks he can hide in Algeria, or Khartoum, or anywhere else in the world, he’s wrong. I will find him. Personally. And . . . snap. You tell him that. And if he comes out into the daylight here in Paris, if he even looks up into the sky, I’ll be there, and I’ll see him, and I’ll be on him like stink on shit. And . . . snap. You be sure. You can even snap your fingers, like this. The sound will remind you. And you tell him my name is Rat. R-A-T. Got that?”
The miniature receiver in his ear crackled to life. “Rat, we got some men coming up the stairs with machine pistols. Looks like GIGN to me. Get out of there.”
“Roger,” Rat said. He looked at the others. “We’ve got company. Out we—”
He didn’t even have time to get it out before the lead French commando kicked in the same door Rat had kicked in and nearly fell forward from using too much force on an already broken door frame. Two others came in right behind him, yelling and aiming their weapons at the four Americans. “Arretez!” the first one yelled.
Rat started to rise slowly to his feet, holding his weapon up so they could see it. They saw it all right, and fired. The first soldier’s bullets hit Rat in the chest three times before he could say a word.
The French commandos closed on Rat and pointed their weapons at him lying on the floor. Rat released the weapon from his fingers. He fought for breath, then sat up slowly. He looked around. The French were yelling at him. He put up his hand to show he meant no harm. He waited, then saw the French officer enter. Just as he had hoped. Rat spoke softly in French. “Marcel, tell them I’m okay.”
Stovic was frozen, not wanting to end like Rat.
The French officer crossed quickly to Rat and squatted. “Rat, what are you doing here?”
“You knew I was in Paris.”
“Yes, but not here.”
Rat pointed to Hafiz lying next to him on the floor. “Asking him a few questions.”
Marcel gave him a hand and helped him up. “You have a vest?”
“Or I’d be dead.”
“I am sorry. They saw you were armed—”
“Shit!” he said, fighting for breath. Some cartilage had been damaged. He could feel it. “Let’s get on with things. We have a long night ahead of us.”
“What do you have in mind?”
He spoke English. “Put the cuffs on me.”
“What? Why?”
“Do it.”
Marcel spoke quickly to one of his men, who put plastic cuffs on Rat. Marcel led him out of the room and down the stairs. “So what’s this about?”
“Take that guy in. He’s the only lead we’ve got. Start interrogating him, then let him know you have no idea how this lunatic American was able to get away with this. Apologize, then release him. Unless I miss my bet, he’ll lead us to them. Can you get me out?”
“Of course.”
Lew paced back and forth. Stovic and Rat sat at the same conference room table where Lew and Patricia had first met François and Elizabeth. Rat continually rubbed his chest where the three shots had hit his bulletproof vest like a sledgehammer. He knew he would have bruises the size of his fist in the morning, but at least he was alive. Stovic was in shock. He should have been in bed, not rolling around on the floor while Rat cut up some Alge
rian and nearly got killed by French counterterrorism forces. He sat with a dry mouth and a stunned look.
Elizabeth and François came in with dark faces. She spoke across the table to Rat with a tone of recognition. “What are you doing here?”
“Tourist.”
“Who are you working for?”
Rat pointed to Stovic sitting next to him. “For my old Academy friend here. He felt like he needed some protection. I came to help out.”
“Are you with the Agency?”
“Agency for International Development? No. They don’t pay enough.”
“You know what I mean.”
“No, I wouldn’t trust those guys as far as I could throw them.”
“You were torturing a Frenchman, about to kill him, in possession of an illegal knife and an automatic weapon. You could go to prison for many years.”
Rat was unimpressed. “Since you shot me three times, let’s just call it even.”
“We are not going to just call it even unless you tell us who you were working for!”
Lew interrupted. “Your commandos broke in and attacked an American’s hotel room based on a hot tip from that Algerian. What made you think some Algerian was gonna help you out?”
“We have had success in such things many times in the past and have been accurate,” Elizabeth answered coldly.
“From the same guy?” Lew asked.
“No, of course not. It is always someone different. It’s just money.”
“Did you not think maybe this guy might be working for our targets? Didn’t you wonder how this guy came out of the blue and came to find you just to tell you all this great information?”
“Of course we thought about it. We wanted to check it out.”
“Didn’t you put the hotel under surveillance?”
“Yes. We did.”
Lew was not impressed. “I’m starting to get worried here. I’ve got a bunch of Americans exposed here, dangling in the water like worms on hooks. I sure would like to hear how you’re going to make all this come out okay.”
“We are doing our best.” François looked at Rat. “Are you with the CIA?”
“I don’t answer those kinds of questions.”
“Where did you get the weapons? Did you bring them with you, or did someone inside France provide them?”
“They were in my carry-on bags on Air France.”
“We should put you in prison.”
“Well, before you do that, let’s talk about putting in prison the shit-for-brains who put together the operation you guys just pulled.”
The Frenchman was not amused. “You said you checked in yesterday. But you registered three days ago as Benjamin Sutton from South Africa.”
“I am Benjamin Sutton from South Africa,” he said suddenly with a remarkably precise South African accent.
The Frenchman frowned and tried to reevaluate what he “knew” to be true.
“My company requires that I travel as an American,” Rat continued in his South African accent. “South Africa is still not appreciated as it should be in the commercial world.”
The Frenchman looked at Lew. “Don’t you know him? Haven’t you seen him before?”
“I thought I had,” Lew said staring at Rat.
“You don’t know anything,” Rat said to all of them. “I am a rare book collector looking for manuscripts from the French Revolution.”
“Enough,” the Frenchman said.
“What’s your plan?” Lew asked, trying to be respectful but failing.
Elizabeth leaped to her feet. “You have no idea what we’ve done. You think all we did was storm this man’s room?” she asked, pointing to Rat. “We’ve done twenty raids so far tonight. We have people all over Paris. We’ve rounded up every suspicious Algerian and many who are not suspicious at all. Maybe we have one or more of those who came here to harm this pilot. Maybe not. We are doing the best we can with the information we have—”
Lew replied, “I’m betting they left their beggar around just for us to play with. They’re nowhere near the Algerian section now. They’re with their weapons somewhere else. You will never find them. So now we have to get them in the act, before they actually shoot. You’ve made it ten times as hard.” He breathed out audibly, expressing his anger and frustration.
Rat stood up. “I’ve got other things to do.”
“You’re not going anywhere,” Elizabeth said.
“Wrong,” Rat said. “Come on, Animal,” he called to Stovic as he walked out of the conference room. He stopped at the door and looked at Elizabeth. “What did you do with the beggar?”
“The man you cut up?”
“Yeah. Him.”
“We have him in custody. A doctor is attending to him. Then we will interrogate him.”
Rat stopped, his face showing concern. “He doesn’t need a doctor. None of those cuts is deeper than two millimeters. He needs to go find the enemy. They need to see him, he needs to tell them that some out-of-control American cowboy was the one who attacked him. Tell him you’re sorry, you had nothing to do with the nut-case American. He was out of control and is in custody. Then let him go. See if he leads you anywhere.”
“You are not free to go,” she said. “We still have more questions for you.”
“Sorry,” he said, shaking his head in regret. “I am completely out of time. Ask Marcel about me. He’ll answer your questions.”
“Of the GIGN?” Elizabeth asked, surprised.
“Him.” He walked out with Stovic, who jogged ahead to catch him in the hallway.
“Do you know what you’re doing?”
“Yes.”
“I thought you said they knew you were coming.”
“They do. Not the bureaucrats, not the office pukes.”
“Shouldn’t they know who you are?” Stovic asked, pointing over his shoulder.
Rat stopped. “Let’s go to your hotel room.”
* * *
Rat knocked gently on the door, a continuous rapping that Andrea had come to recognize. No one just kept knocking. Only Rat. She looked through the peephole and confirmed it was him. She opened the door. “What are you doing here?” she asked as her eyes adjusted to the light in the hall.
“Morning. Time to rise and shine,” he said walking right by her.
“Come on in,” she said to his back. She looked at her watch. “It’s two in the morning! What are you doing here?”
“Can I use your computer again?”
She rolled her eyes and turned on the laptop on the antique desk by the window. She turned on the lamp by the bed. She sat where she had thrown the covers back. “How long have you been in Paris?”
He sat down at the desk and waited while her laptop booted up. “Couple of days.”
“You promised me a dinner along the Seine. You said you knew just the place.”
“I do.” The computer was ready. He inserted a mini CD and called up the encryption software.
“I think you only like me for my computer.”
“How’d you know?” he asked as he began typing. “Just your computer. Well, there is one other thing.”
“What?” she asked.
“Your . . . smile. I love your smile too.”
She shook her head. “Why do you keep rubbing your chest?”
“Had a little event tonight.”
She threw the covers back and began feeling his chest. “You get shot?”
“Yeah.”
She pulled his shirt off, helped him with his kevlar vest, and examined his chest. “Any trouble breathing?”
“Little.”
She went to the closet and pulled out a stethoscope. She listened to his lungs. They sounded clear. She felt his ribs. He winced as he typed. “You may have cracked the cartilage in your sternum.”
“I know.”
“Want some Motrin?”
“Sure.”
She went to her bag to get the medicine, then to the bathroom for a glass of water. “Here.”
He took it quickly without looking away from the screen.
“What’s so important?”
“Can’t talk about it. Trying to finish our job here.”
He continued working furiously on the computer keyboard. This was the critical time. This was when people lost their nerve, particularly politicians. He typed his encrypted e-mail to St. John, telling her to hold the line, keep the air show on, not to cancel it simply because they hadn’t caught all the Algerians. He was sure Ismael and the others were confident they could pull it off now. They had gotten the weapons and people into Paris, they had avoided capture so far, and would certainly be confident now of their success. But Rat knew the closer they got to their objective, the narrower their options became. They would have to put themselves in place and ultimately show themselves. That’s when they became predictable. He knew Washington would want to pull the plug. Much better a nonevent than a disaster. In his experience, too many politicians couldn’t take the heat. They’d rather leave the noose a little loose than risk stimulating an event that resulted in deaths. Rat felt differently. If you didn’t take chances to catch terrorists, they simply raised the ante next time. He tried every argument he could think of that Sarah St. John could use. He read it quickly, checked the spelling, and hit “send.” He ejected the encryption disk and turned the computer off. “See you,” he said, pulling his shirt on slowly.
“Anything else I can do?”
“No. I got to keep moving. Maybe we’ll do the river tomorrow night. After the air show.”
“It’s a date.”
He walked quietly out of her room and down to Stovic’s room. The Police Nationale who were guarding the rooms recognized him and nodded.
Rat knocked gently, and Stovic opened his door. He knew he had to get Stovic’s mind off himself. He looked in the mirror at the bruises forming on his chest. “I feel like I’ve been tackled by six of those fat-boy NFL linemen.”
“Where’d you go?”
“Had to stop by my good friend’s room.”
“Andrea?”
“Yeah.”
“What in the world for?”
The Shadows of Power Page 29