by Berkom, DV
The young man wearing the patterned scarf Leine had noticed earlier pedaled to the front of the café and climbed off his bike. He parked near the entrance and shrugged off his backpack before going inside. Twenty minutes later, he reappeared, straddled the bike, and set off down the street.
The gods are with you tonight, she thought. He’d be long gone by the time Robicheaux arrived. Not that she anticipated a gunfight—if all went as planned, the Frenchman would be the only casualty—but a lack of innocent bystanders was ideal.
A few minutes before 21:00 a black sedan pulled up to the café and two men got out. One was huge and wore dark glasses that didn’t cover the ugly scars along his face; the other was shorter and had a hat pulled low on his forehead, obscuring his features.
Leine peered through the scope, trying to make out if the one in the hat might be Robicheaux, but she couldn’t be certain. More than likely they were advance security and the Frenchman was still inside the car, or would show later in another vehicle.
The two men scanned the area surrounding the café. Apparently satisfied, the man in the hat opened the back door of the sedan and stepped aside. Drawing a bead just above the open door, Leine took the slack out of the trigger and waited. Just then, a van bearing the logo of a local beer distributor pulled up, blocking her view.
Damn. There was now only a partial view of the sedan’s trunk. She waited a few beats, willing the vehicle to move, but the driver’s side door opened and a man holding a clipboard got out.
Leine scanned the street below her. There weren’t any cars or pedestrian traffic nearby. Leaving the rifle, she grabbed her pack and scrambled over the roof’s edge. The climb down took much less time than reaching the roof, and she sprinted across the boulevard toward the bridge, sliding the semiauto from her waistband as she did. Staying low, she moved quickly along the canal, keeping the van and the trunk of the sedan in her sights. As she stepped onto the bridge, movement caught her eye. Partially obscured by a tree, the young man in the scarf stood in the shadows next to his bike at the end of the bridge, his attention riveted on the café. Leine stopped short. There was something different.
The backpack.
The material sagged across his back, drooping like a deflated tire. Earlier, when he’d gone into the café, the pack had been full.
Leine shoved her gun into her waistband and sprinted across the bridge toward him. As she drew near, the cell phone in his hand came into view. Still focused on the café, he didn’t hear her approach until seconds before she reached him.
She was too late.
The explosion ripped through the night, throwing them both to the ground. Glass splintered, showering the sidewalk, and pieces of brick and burning debris arced through the air, landing in the street yards away.
Ears ringing, Leine rolled to her feet. For a moment, all motion ceased, as though the world was catching its breath.
Then the screaming began.
The cries of survivors pierced the still night. The young man, no more than a teenager, scrambled to his feet and turned to run. Leine tackled him and shoved him to the ground. He landed face first and hard. The air left his lungs with a loud ooph.
“You’re not going anywhere.” Leine wrestled his arms behind him and knelt on his back to keep him still as she surveyed the damage.
Glass shards lay on the street next to the van, its windows blown out from the blast. The sedan hadn’t fared any better. Flames licked at the empty windows of the café, and black smoke streamed through a gaping hole on the side of the building. Bricks and glass littered the sidewalk. The driver of the van lay on his back in the middle of the street, a pool of blood surrounding his head.
A man appeared at the entrance, arm clutched around a sobbing woman, her shirt drenched in blood. They staggered outside, followed by three more, all of whom were coughing. Two were covered in blood. One man didn’t appear to have suffered any damage, although the look on his face told Leine he was in a state of shock.
“What are you doing? Let me go,” the kid cried, his voice muffled by his prone position.
A familiar accent.
“You’re Russian?” she asked.
“Let me go,” he repeated, his voice weak.
“Not likely,” Leine said, her heart racing as she scanned the survivors for Robicheaux. The kid struggled against her. Leine pressed harder and he gave up, his body going limp. His cell phone was lying next to him on the ground, and she picked it up and slid it into her pocket. She patted him down, paying particular attention to his backpack, but he didn’t have a weapon.
The big man with the scars who’d exited the sedan before the bomb went off staggered from the café. Blood streamed down the side of his head onto his shirt. No one else followed. Sirens wailed in the distance. Leine had to find out if the Frenchman had made it inside the café and if he was dead, and she needed to do it now, before the police arrived.
She lifted her knee from the kid’s back and stood up, yanking him to his feet before she wrenched his hands up between his shoulder blades. He didn’t cry out.
“Who do you work for?” Leine pulled her gun, shoved it into his back, and propelled him toward the side street next to the café. “Who were you trying to kill?”
The kid kept his mouth shut. Leine put more pressure on his arm. He winced and a small cry escaped his lips.
“I don’t have time to fuck around here. I will break your arm and probably worse if you don’t tell me. Now.”
His face impassive, he set his lips in a hard line. Leine wrenched his arm to the breaking point. Wincing, he stumbled. Tears of pain streaked from the corners of his eyes and rolled down his cheeks.
“I—a friend of my uncle’s. I don’t know his name.”
“Who were you sent to kill?” They were close to the café, approaching from the side. No one paid any attention to them.
“A French murderer.”
“Name.”
His expression hardened. Leine pulled him up short and pressed the gun more firmly into his back. “If you don’t tell me what you know, you won’t be of use to me and I will give you up to the police. You’ll be tried as a terrorist.”
“Emile Robicheaux.” He spat on the sidewalk.
“How do you know this Robicheaux was inside when you detonated the bomb?”
An emotion—fear? uncertainty?—shadowed his features and he looked at the ground. “I knew,” he said with a defiant shrug.
“You knew jack shit. Do you have any idea how many innocent people were inside that café? You realize you likely killed more than the Frenchman, right? If you even got him.” Leine’s face heated, her anger spiking at the boy’s idiotic, amateur attempt. There were far better ways of eliminating a target than remote-controlled explosives. Ones with much lower casualties.
“Sometimes many must suffer when the good of the whole is compromised.”
Leine checked her urge to slap the self-righteous smirk off the boy’s face. “Just stop with the martyrdom bullshit, all right?”
They reached the side of the café, and Leine shoved him up against the brick wall.
“Your uncle’s friend, does he work for anyone? SVR? GRU?” Was this an example of one Russian organization not knowing what the other was doing? Possible, but not probable.
He stared at the ground, his expression unreadable. She wrenched his arm again and shoved him harder into the wall.
He groaned. “Yes. No. I don’t know.” The words were sandwiched between short, explosive breaths.
The sirens were getting louder. Leine yanked him away from the wall and frog-marched him next to the gaping hole in the café.
“What’s your name?”
“Why, are you going to call my mother?”
Leine almost laughed at the sarcasm. “You know, that’s not a bad idea. I have your phone. I’ll bet she’d be interested in what you’ve done.”
“Please don’t call her.” Panic laced his words. “My name is Ilya.” He strained to
look through the opening, but Leine pulled him back.
“Not so fast.”
“But I have to know if the Frenchman is dead. Please, I must look.”
“It’s possible you may not recognize him.”
“I would know the rat-fuck anywhere.”
“Not if his head’s blown off.” She surveyed the damage to the seventeenth-century wall. “What were you trying to do, take the entire building down?”
His cheeks reddened. “I wanted to be certain...” His words trailed off.
She checked the street behind them. When she was sure no one was watching, she stepped over the bricks and through the hole, dragging Ilya behind her.
The café was unrecognizable. The explosives had ripped through the wooden bar, leaving a gaping hole in its wake, and sent tables and chairs like missiles into the booths and walls. Several bodies fanned out from the blast site, as though they’d been flung through the air by an angry giant. Ceiling tiles littered the floor, the light fixtures warped into grotesque sculptures.
Leine gagged at the smell of charred flesh and toxic, melted plastic, and took shallow breaths through her mouth. She pulled out a small flashlight and quickly walked Ilya by first one dead body and then another, but he was unable to identify any of them as Robicheaux. A few had burned beyond recognition but Leine discounted these as they didn’t match the Frenchman’s size or gender. Ilya’s face blanched at the sight and smell of the charred flesh and looked away, retching as he did.
When they’d covered the sections of the building that were accessible, including the bathrooms, Leine and Ilya headed back toward the blast hole in the wall. By the sound of the sirens, first responders were only seconds away. Leine pushed Ilya out onto the street and followed him into the shadows.
Lights strobed against the building opposite the café as emergency personnel pulled up to the entrance. Leine hurried Ilya down a dark side street, away from the shouting and chaos, unsure of what to do with the young Russian.
Or how she was going to find the Frenchman.
***
Emile Robicheaux looked out the window at the black smoke billowing from the café as his car sped past. They’d been less than a block away when the bomb went off. He shifted in his seat, uncomfortable in the Kevlar vest. He wasn’t about to take it off.
Funny, he thought they’d use a sniper. Or, at the very least, poison. Maybe even a knife concealed in an assassin’s coat sleeve, or a garrote, although that would have been a last resort. He’d prepared for those methods. The bomb had been a surprise. Messy. Amateurish.
Not up to standards.
Fortunately, Oscar made it out alive. Robicheaux ordered his driver to pull over long enough to pluck his friend from the sidewalk. He’d sustained a deep gash on the side of his head, to which he held a handkerchief with limited success. Blood soaked the side of his face and down his coat, contributing to the giant man’s fearsome appearance.
“I thought you said there wasn’t a problem,” Robicheaux said. Oscar had called to give the all clear—right before the bomb went off.
“As far as I could tell, everything was according to plan.” Oscar shook his head. “The Russian is dead. His bodyguards didn’t survive, either.”
“So, the bomber could have been targeting either of us.”
The demise of the potential aircraft supplier came at an unfortunate time. The Frenchman’s business was exploding—he smiled inwardly at his play on words—and more planes were imperative if he were to expand. Now he’d have to find another supplier he could trust.
Not easy in his world.
The bomb worried him. His associate could have been marked for death by some terrorist faction, but the theory had holes. Robicheaux had checked the man’s credentials and there’d been no evidence of dissatisfied customers or anything in his background that would suggest ties to fanatics—other than having dealt with some of the nasty characters who frequented the shadowy black market of the arms world. And even those types wouldn’t chew off the hand that fed them.
Indeed, the man had a stellar reputation, as far as criminals went.
That left the possibility that either the Russians used an incompetent assassin, which wasn’t likely, or more than one group wanted him dead.
Much more likely.
He had to admit, he was disappointed they hadn’t sent the Léopard. His face grew warm just thinking about what he’d do with her when he captured the mysterious assassin, which would certainly happen. The torture would be exquisite to watch. He glanced at Oscar, who was staring out the window at the passing cars, his hand pressed against his head. The gush of blood from the laceration appeared to be slowing.
Probably just a flesh wound. He’ll be in good form in no time.
Robicheaux’s plan to draw the woman assassin out was still viable. He fully expected her to exploit the perceived weakness he’d created in his security protocols, although he might have to tweak things a bit in order to lure her in. His mole in Russian intelligence left little doubt that she was the one they would use.
The clumsy attempt on his life already pushed to the furthest recesses of his mind, the Frenchman smiled and leaned back in his seat.
Come to me, little cat. I have something special planned for you...
Chapter 11
“Make the call,” Leine said, and handed the phone to Ilya. He stared out the window of the restaurant, his expression unreadable. They’d stopped inside the small café to regroup and warm up with a hot drink.
Leine leaned forward and pushed the phone across the table. “You want revenge for your uncle?” she asked, her voice low. There weren’t many customers in the dimly lit room—a couple near the back and an old man sipping tea with a book open in front of him near the kitchen—but the less attention, the better.
Ilya had given her a terse version of what happened to his Uncle Piotr at the hands of the Frenchman and how Robicheaux left Ilya alive to spread the story after the massacre. In addition to a deep sense of survivor guilt, his anger was a palpable blaze, the idea of exacting revenge for his uncle’s death the only oxygen needed to fan the flames. It was Leine’s job to exploit that need and use his contacts to track down her target.
“Make. The. Call.”
Ilya closed his eyes and shook his head. “I will have to tell them I failed.”
“They’ll find out sooner or later. And now you have me on your side.”
He opened his eyes, and the corners of his mouth pulled up in a smirk. “But you are a woman,” he said with a dismissive wave of his hand.
Leine let the comment slide. She shrugged. “If you don’t want my help...” Her voice trailed off, and she reached for the phone. Ilya placed his hand over hers.
“Wait.” He sighed. “I will make the call.”
Leine released the phone, and Ilya flipped it open. He scrolled through his contacts until he found the number he was looking for, and brought the cell to his ear.
“Be sure you don’t mention anything about me. Certainly don’t want them to think you need a mere woman to help you carry out a man’s job, right?”
Ilya glared at her. Leine stifled a smile.
“It’s me,” he said and sat straighter. He listened for a moment and then shook his head as though the person he was speaking with could see him. “No. I was unable to identify him. He was not there.” Listening again, he grew quiet and shifted in his seat, his face turning a deep red.
Leine drummed her fingers on the table and sipped her tea. Enough time had been wasted. The Frenchman was probably on a flight to somewhere else by now. If Ilya’s contact couldn’t help them find Robicheaux, then she’d be forced to call Eric to see if he had any fresh intel. Something she did not want to do in light of the circumstances. His suggestion to hit Robicheaux from inside the café had been suspect to start. He rarely told her how to do her job. The last time he did was Glushenko. Both times she could have easily been killed.
She pulled out her phone and checked
to see if Carlos had left a message. He hadn’t. Why would Eric hang him out to dry unless he suspected something? If he did, then Eric would naturally have doubts about her. Guilt by association.
Ilya disconnected the call and pocketed the phone.
“Well?”
The young Russian paused a moment, as though wrestling with whether he should trust his new ally. Finally, he gave a small nod.
“I have an address.”
***
Leine tried calling Spartacus again but there was no answer. His shop was on the way to where the Frenchman was purported to have gone, and she’d called him from the restaurant to see if her passport was ready. As luck would have it, Sparky was still at the store and had just finished. She was welcome to pick it up as long as she arrived before midnight, at which time he would close for the evening. When she mentioned that she’d left the rifle on the roof of a building several blocks away, he assured her that none of the weapons or ammunition he provided were remotely traceable.
They walked to the front door, and Leine rang the buzzer. There was no answer, so she knocked. Still no answer.
“Maybe he left it unlocked.” Ilya pushed on the glass. Surprisingly, it opened. They continued down the hallway toward the back of the building. The door to the bookstore was slightly ajar.
“Let me go first,” Leine said as she reached behind her and withdrew her gun. Sparky may have left the door open because he was expecting them, but she wasn’t going to take any chances. Ilya stepped back and she entered the store.
The front room looked as it did earlier that day, except three of the towering stacks of books had toppled over. Dozens of loose sheets splayed across the floor, giving the already cluttered shop an even more disorganized appearance.
A struggle?
Ilya swiveled his head, trying to take it all in. “Who does this?” he muttered under his breath.