by James Phelan
“I thought she was with you.”
“No,” Fox said as he zipped along the near-empty Quai d’Orsay, too busy taking in the view across to the Right Bank and trying to get the radio off what sounded like the worst of the Eurovision Song Contest to notice a driver in front had slammed on their brakes. Fox halted suddenly and the truck behind nudged into his bumper.
“What was that?”
“Nothing,” Fox said. No damage done, but a few choice French words flew his way from both drivers. He wondered why he’d been the cause of both their anger: Oh yeah, they were French, he wasn’t. A few departing toots of the horn later and the traffic resumed its flow.
“I haven’t seen Kate,” said Gammaldi
“She must be asleep still,” Fox said, changing up through the gears. He and Kate had both been sleeping better since coming back together, the comfortable rhythm of having someone you love sleep next to you at night.
“Well, don’t be stingy on the food shopping.”
“Al, I could bring you back a shipping container of food and you’d still want more,” Fox replied, overtaking a heavily laden truck. The Golf’s twin-charged 1.4-litre petrol motor didn’t sound like much on paper, but it had plenty of pick-up through the streets of Paris, plus quick reactions to his foot on the gas and good brakes, thank God. It was the other drivers out there who worried him. Cars, trucks, motorcycles, all hellbent on dominating the road, all driven with fervour and with one purpose: getting moi to destination rapide.
Gammaldi started rattling off a list of items he wanted.
The traffic was not yet heavy but it reminded Fox of London, where tiny streets not designed for the car caused chaos. He waited his turn and took off up a cobbled street, catching sight of some little dogs getting at it while their owners kissed in greeting.
A Smart car flashed past at warp speed, lights off, barely noticeable were it not for its blaring horn and some French cursing directed at Fox for missing his stop sign.
“Al, just text me what you want, I’m getting off the phone to concentrate.”
He ended the call. Turned up the news on the radio: the G20 summit was underway in Shanghai. Listening to the politicians’ smug tones reminded Fox why he’d bugged out of the Navy job. Well, he hadn’t had much choice in leaving what had been a promising but short-lived career, but the choices that had led to his discharge were all his, and he had learned to sleep soundly at night because of them.
“Not that soundly,” Fox said out loud, catching his tired eyes in the reflection of his rear-view mirror. More soundly than he would have if he’d not taken action when he’d felt he had to. A sense of knowing more than the bureaucrats, a belief that politics and power were too self-serving to do what was right, had always been with him and he was amazed he’d ever been accepted by the military in the first place. Maybe they’d wanted to diversify. Probably they’d just been desperate to fill recruitment quotas. Still, following a big turn-around in second year thanks to a decent officer telling Fox and Gammaldi to pull their socks up, he’d managed to finish second in his academic class and fifth overall in his graduating year.
He turned onto Rue de Grenelle and pulled into a parking space near the closed street market. The car parked itself, parallel, not something he’d let it do again.
Since he’d left the Navy, Fox had been recruited into the dream job of an investigative reporter with the Global Syndicate of Reporters (GSR). He had his pick of assignments, headed the military bureau, made a nice salary, had bought a good apartment in SoHo in Lower Manhattan … What was not to like? Why did he feel so uneasy? He felt he knew: it wasn’t really his calling. To seek out the truth? Maybe, or some variation thereof. But to disseminate that to an increasingly uninterested public via syndicated news items? What was next?
He knew what was bringing all this uncertainty to a head: Kate re-entering his life. He was at the tail end of a six-month enforced sabbatical that had been driving him nuts, and hanging out with her was becoming more and more desirable.
Women …
He reached down for his iPhone as it bleeped, and clicked on the text message: it looked like a shopping list for a month’s supplies.
He typed a reply: Jesus Al, that’s like two of every animal … You building an ark?
Locking the car, he walked towards the busy market, where Saturday shoppers were already snapping up the best produce. He waited at a café window that faced the intersection, the smell of good coffee making his stomach groan. There was the rumble of an aircraft overhead, louder and louder. He looked up as he neared the front of the queue, ordered his triple-shot café au lait, looked back up to the sky; a massive A380 was banking overhead.
Al’s reply blinked through: Making cassoulet. Don’t forget the confit duck. CONFIT!
OK MOFO! he replied and put the iPhone in his back pocket. He looked back at the café window as he crossed the street and entered the market, checking the reflection behind him.
There were a few tourists among the locals buzzing about, and plenty of vans dropping off fresh produce with FedEx-like speed and precision. Hard to make out on the busy side of the street, but at least two figures sat in a blacked-out Peugeot sedan, parked a few spaces down the road from where he’d left the Golf. They were watching him. He’d seen them earlier making the same turns, driving after him.
Following him.
He bought a newspaper from an old man on the corner. A familiar face looked back at him from the front cover of The International Herald Tribune—Roman Babich, headed for trial at last. A quick skim of the article revealed that the corrupt Russian oligarch was being transferred soon, that his first trial was expected to take place in Rome in the coming month, and that the Russian judiciary were cooperating with the FBI and Interpol in providing damning evidence against the man who, until recently, was one of their vaunted business kings.
As Fox turned to the market he glanced back across the intersection, at that black Peugeot 607—still with the outlines of two figures just visible behind a half-open tinted window. Watching him, waiting.
Fox went on his way, the back of his neck prickling with sweat. He was beginning to feel it was the start of a very long day.
2
HIGH OVER EUROPE
“Entering some turbulence in a couple of minutes, better buckle up,” the flight captain announced.
FBI Special Agent in Charge Andrew Hutchinson looked across the aisle at his prisoner, Roman Babich: he was buckled in well, and seemed to be asleep. The two FBI agents sitting opposite were locked into their reading: the young one slowly turning the pages of Esquire, the other engrossed in the latest Vince Flynn.
“Capel,” Hutchinson said as he stood and braced against the headrest. “Don’t go letting any of that Mitch Rapp head-cracking interrogation seep in.”
“Rapp knows what he’s doing,” Capel said. “I think you’re thinking about Jack Bauer.”
“Don’t get me started on him,” said Hutchinson. He headed towards the cockpit, holding onto the backs of the chairs as the Gulfstream aircraft bucked and sucked its way over the Med. Designated C-37A in US Air Force service, the Gulfstream V twin-engined business jet fulfilled missions for government and Defense Department officials, everything from senior officer and VIP transport, to rendition flights such as this.
“What have we got?” Hutchinson asked the USAF pilots.
“Summer storm, sir, big one at that,” the co-pilot said over his shoulder, his hands busy at the flight controls. “Will probably last about twenty minutes or so; we’re climbing a little higher to try to get out of it quicker.”
Hutchinson looked out the cockpit windows. Dark clouds had appeared out of nowhere, and shafts of brilliant orange sunlight were piercing through, giving everything to the east a golden lining.
“This normal?”
“Define normal,” the pilot replied. “Seriously, weather’s never normal, especially these days.”
> “Climate change?”
“It’s certainly changing. The Med’s getting more and more hurricanes each year, big ones at that.”
“We’re flying into a hurricane?” Hutchinson asked, his fingers tightening on the seat back in front of him.
The pilot shook his head, a hand to his earphone listening to the air-traffic controller.
“He likes to spook people,” the co-pilot said in his East-Coast tone, hands jinking on the controls as the aircraft shook and vibrated its way up through a turbulence layer. Both pilots were Air Force flight officers out of Andrews, both were among the best trained in the world; neither did much to put Hutchinson at ease with what was already a nerve-racking prisoner transfer without the weather’s interference.
“The mistral’s blowing through France and Spain and the cool air is colliding with the hotter air coming in off the Med and the African continent,” the pilot said. “It’s going to get dark and bumpy for a bit, that’s all.”
“Bumpier than this?” Hutchinson asked.
“This ain’t that bumpy.”
“Bumpy enough to knock our radar out.” The pilot looked across, frowned, toggled some controls. “Damn.”
The co-pilot tapped the LCD screen and flicked a couple of switches.
“Damn,” he concurred. “It’s out good.”
“Damn? What’s damn?” Hutchinson asked. The pilot looked to the co-pilot, pointed at another section of switches and shook his head. “We need a radar, right?” Hutchinson continued, “I mean, it’s a handy tool flying into a dark storm, right?”
“It is pretty handy for mapping the weather, no doubt,” the pilot replied and gave Hutchinson a reassuring look, but the co-pilot flicking through the aircraft’s instrument manual wasn’t providing the reassurance he was after.
“Don’t worry, Agent Hutchinson,” the pilot said. “We’re thirtyfive thousand feet and climbing, with nothing but the Med down below. We’re not gonna crash into a mountain, and our GPS and all flight management navigation systems are working fine.”
“And, we know where we’re going, right?” the co-pilot chimed in, looking up from the manual and peering out the window, pointing towards the faint glow of the sunrise backlighting the dense clouds. “East, I think. We’re headed eastwards, right?”
The airmen laughed, big joke.
“Great,” Hutchinson said. “Just get us there and back home in one piece, if that’s not too much trouble?”
The aircraft pitched up and down violently. Hutchinson banged the top of his head on the cabin’s ceiling. The co-pilot started calling in to the control tower whose airspace they were in, his voice matter-of-fact and clear.
“Agent Hutchinson, you might want to take a seat, sir,” the pilot said, serious, his arms steady at the flight controls. “This will get rougher before it gets any better.”
“Right…” Hutchinson said, before finding his way back into the cabin. What he wouldn’t give to be some place else right now—on the ground, carefree, far away from this chaos.
3
PARIS
This would be a lot easier if it weren’t for the pandemonium of the crowd. Newspaper tucked under his arm, into his second coffee, Fox’s basket was half-full of produce as he walked back along the market street, Rue Cler. He took time to check behind him, pausing at stalls and storefronts and changing direction at random to try to catch out anyone following him. No one stood out, but if he was being tailed it would be by professionals better trained and practised than he.
Rue Cler was a quaint cobbled pedestrian street lined with shops and aproned fruit-stall attendants coaxing passers-by into trying their ripe berries and stone fruits. He bought some nectarines and cherries, the supplies Gammaldi needed from the butcher and poissonnerie, and headed back up the street on the opposite side, towards his car on Rue de Grenelle. He’d deal with the Peugeot then, if it was still there. He couldn’t shake the conviction that it had been sent by Babich’s people to settle the score, maybe even… No. If they knew he was here chasing up a story to ensure their boss was finished, he’d be dead by now.
As he walked and shopped, he worked through alternative routes back to the farmhouse, eliminating options that were too direct in getting out of Paris. He took his time heading back to the car, not wanting to start the Golf until he had a couple of good options mapped out in his mind’s eye. He considered abandoning the car altogether, but discounted the idea—there could well be someone watching him now, and he preferred his chances behind the wheel rather than on foot.
Whenever he stopped at shops, he casually glanced around, creating new sightlines and checking his blindspots as he squeezed fruit and perused breads and pastries. Every Parisian here seemed to love shopping—parents with children, friends with smiles, lovers with linked arms, old couples with wheeled baskets—whole neighbourhoods seemed to be here making a morning of it. He couldn’t pick out anyone following him. Maybe he was overreacting—it had been a while since he’d been out like this without the protection of the FBI. Perhaps the occupants of the Peugeot were innocently shopping here, too? Maybe it was just a coincidence that they’d followed his roundabout route from near the car-hire place to the market. Maybe. He felt a little disarmed by the gaiety around him; it seemed all too easy to blow off the danger and get lost in the atmosphere of the Left Bank…
But Fox’s alertness was unshakable, and he had the same physical feeling and reactions now he’d had when he’d been on patrol in Iraq and Afghanistan. Here he was ambling and shopping, leading the closest thing to what he could imagine was a normal life, yet he felt in the middle of his own war zone. Anyone in the masses around him could be hostile and he knew if he had to he’d use the crowd in his favour.
Fox had spotted plenty of the young bourgeois who’d moved into the Left Bank, just as Renard had mentioned over drinks earlier in the week. They were easy to spot with their Lacoste polo shirts and loafers, shopping for produce by sight rather than that Parisian way of touch and smell; they were busy gentrifying the area, as similar classes had done to other places he’d lived in within Manhattan and Brooklyn. The shopkeepers helped them efficiently and cordially, and then warmly greeted the next customer, someone they’d been serving for two decades. Both parties knew there was nothing to be done about the change that was coming but to shelter under the scaffolding and wait for the sandblasting to be over.
Fox noticed a squad of happy young men in military uniform, probably from the nearby École Militaire, Napoleon’s alma mater, walking the street and watching girls. Fox had always been an atmosphere kind of guy; being in the exact space, walking the same ground, breathing the air where momentous events had occurred was exciting to him. Part of the reason he’d joined the military was to see the world, and he’d done plenty of that. The reporting gig was better, supposedly safer—in theory—but in practice he’d been the right guy in the wrong place more than enough times. Yet there was no denying the drive in him that made him want to shape a story rather than just report it, a feeling that—despite the passing of time—he found impossible to shake. His current enforced sabbatical was making him question where a guy like him truly belonged: in the arena or the press box? Certainly not here, getting elbowed by the tourists who had started to arrive en masse.
Last on his list were the cheese, wine and a few things from the supermarket. Outside the fromagerie was a long, narrow, canopied table displaying an array of coloured packages. The shopkeeper explained that the shapes of cheeses signalled their place of origin, which was as important with cheese as it was with wine; something that heralded their terroir, a concept Fox was still trying to fathom.
He left the wine store with a mixed half-dozen, grabbed a few things at the supermarket, crossed onto Rue de Grenelle and headed towards his car. The Peugeot was still there. He played through his escape and evasion plan, revised it, took in the vehicles coming up the street and revised it again.
Fox smiled as he
thought about what brought him to Paris this week: a story. Information that would perhaps help seal the fate of Roman Babich, the man who was making his and others’ lives a living hell. His two companions back at Renard’s farmhouse were unaware of the real reason he was here, but then they didn’t need to know, right? He was here to do this for all of them, to make life simpler, safer. Sure, this trip was a respite from New York, where they were constantly being minded by the FBI while Babich was headed for court—and Renard’s offthe-beaten-track farmhouse was as good a hiding spot as any.
Back at his car, parked in front of about a hundred bikes and scooters, Fox stowed the shopping, checking the traffic coming up the street. As he got in he checked his rear-view mirror—the eyes that looked back at him were unfamiliar; his own, but with that edge of unease he’d carried for too long now. He adjusted the mirror and saw the blacked-out Peugeot had its running lights on. He knew that no matter where he went in the world, as long as he kept looking under rocks there were those willing to kill for the information he obtained.
Fox revved the Golf’s little engine. He had a couple of routes mapped out in his mind, none of them direct to the Normandy highway, let alone the farmhouse—he’d shake this vehicle in the tight one-way maze of Parisian backstreets.
He gunned the accelerator, handbrake off, waited for a truck to block the Peugeot, then slammed into drive and took off.
4
PARIS
Boris Malevich sat behind the wheel of his nondescript sedan, tense. The reporter wasn’t an easy target to follow—clearly the guy was wary, perhaps had suspicions that he’d be targeted, knew the stakes of this game. He’d rather not take him in public, but if an opportunity arose he would. Better to follow him, follow him and wait for the chance that would undoubtedly soon present itself. He fantasised that he had the luxury of time to simply do this, let the reporter complete his work, and then move in, relieving him of what they all sought. That would be ideal, but his deadline was today—today or never—and his own life trumped that of any life he may be forced to take.