by Gary Haynes
They stormed in, the beams from their flashlights seemingly scanning every inch of the room, picking out discarded clothes, empty bottles of water, a plywood closet. Grinning, he raised his hands.
“Get down. Down on the floor,” one said.
He obeyed. A second later the left side of his face was shoved into the carpet. He felt a boot on his neck, another on his ankles. His hands were deftly secured with flexi-cuffs. The plastic nipped his skin and he winced.
He said a silent prayer and bit hard on the pellet, feeling the cool liquid poison pass down his throat.
“God is Great,” he murmured.
Chapter 67
Tom had agreed to drive TSM’s sedan because he spoke fluent French and could understand the instructions from the sat nav. Lester was sitting beside him, grumbling about not understanding a damn thing, including why they were heading for a Muslim suburb and what the hell they were going to do once they got there, even though Tom had told him they were there to observe. TSM was sitting in the back, a pair of small earphones in his ears attached to a black-box receiver, a laptop on his thighs.
En route TSM had explained that a potential suspect was hiding out at a nearby mosque. Tom had asked him how the DCRI had known this and TSM had said that the DCRI had a handful of Muslim assets on the payroll and that they did the rounds of the mosques, picking up what intel they could. One had heard a rumour that a Yemini was sleeping at a mosque and although it might not be much, it could be. It turned out to be the nearest one to which the vehicle had been parked, the one with matching numbers on the plate recounted by the French woman. Together, that was just too much of a coincidence.
TSM had given Tom and Lester holstered SIG Sauer P229s chambered in 9mm, saying that Crane had said they were their favourites. But they were for ultimate self-defence only, and that, TSM had said, meant that only if someone was pointing a gun barrel down their throat.
“They haven’t thrown up a police cordon,” TSM said. “So we’ll stop just after the next left.”
TSM said that the anti-terrorist squads had had to go in as stealthily as possible, given the many lookouts, and that a fleet of police cars and emergency vehicles would have meant that the operation would have been fatally telegraphed. They’d only gotten the intel six hours ago, and that even though the squads were fast response, they still had to be briefed and put a plan together. It would have been better to have gone in a few hours earlier, before twilight, at least, in the hope that most people in the vicinity were still asleep. But it was what it was.
As Tom turned the corner he slowed down and parked up beside a cluster of trash bags. The drizzle had turned to rain and the wipers were on full speed. The stench from the bags seemed to permeate the interior of the car and Lester began coughing and bitching.
An angry crowd had gathered outside a house about thirty yards up, clanking trash can lids onto the ground and shaking their fists in the air. A man was being carried out of the mosque, with a blanket over his head. Above, a police helicopter was scanning the crowd with a searchlight, even though it was all but light, the wash from the rotors dishevelling hair and clothes. As three police cars raced past the sedan, their sirens screaming, Tom hit the steering wheel with his palm.
“He’s dead,” he said, looking in the rearview at TSM.
TSM removed one his earpieces. “A second helicopter is following a moped, with a pillion passenger. They saw a guy climbing out onto the roof. He passed over five adjoining roofs before climbing down a fire escape. The crowd aren’t random. They prevented the snatch squad from going after him on the ground. But the guy with his head covered could be Ibrahim. And if he is he’s dead already, as you say. Whoever he was, he didn’t have an ID card on him. Everyone refuses to carry one in these parts.”
“So we go after the moped?” Tom said.
“Yes. According to the helicopter co-pilot, it’s heading into the centre of the city.”
Lester turned around. “Can you get me one of those?” he said, pointing at the receiver.
TSM smiled. “For ten thousand Euro I can get you anything you want, my friend.”
“Can we focus here?” Tom said, irritated.
TSM gave him the latest location and put the earpiece back in.
Tom turned the ignition fob key, jabbed in the details to the sat nav, and jerked the stick into reverse before executing a three-point turn.
Chapter 68
Ibrahim got off the moped outside a glass and chrome shopping mall, clutching his hessian bag. It was already busy with commuters and those coming off the night shift, buying breakfast or bread and milk from the ground-floor supermarket outlets. He patted the driver on the shoulder, who still had the moped revving, and watched briefly as he zigzagged into the heavy traffic.
Looking up he saw the hovering police helicopter. The noise of the traffic and the moped’s engine had masked the sound as they’d travelled through the Paris streets and highways, but he’d guessed it’d still been there. Shrugging, he walked over the sidewalk onto the wide pink and grey paving-stone path, slick with rain, leading to the mall, and glanced to the left and right, making sure nobody was shadowing him on the grassy flanks.
As he heard a siren in the near distance, he figured he had maybe a few minutes to do what he intended.
Trust no one, he thought.
In that instant he decided that he couldn’t risk coming back to Europe, even if it meant scaling down the international nature of the attack. But no, he thought, others would volunteer for that. For now he had to concentrate on getting out of France safely. But, despite his body language to the contrary, he felt the world closing in on him, felt an undeniable sense of fear, the fear of being caught before he could carry out his sacred task.
Two minutes later, Ibrahim was in the public restroom on the mall’s ground floor. He’d checked underneath the cubicles, and had seen that they were empty. He stepped behind the entry door and waited. After thirty seconds the door opened, as he hoped it would. A middle-aged man came in, wearing a business suit. He had silver hair and looked as if he took the French habit of eating a two-hour lunch to its limit. Clearly sensing someone behind him he turned.
Ibrahim rushed at him. The man put up his arms instinctively, and Ibrahim kicked him hard in the groin with his instep. The man doubled over and let out a shrill scream like an injured rodent. Ibrahim sidestepped behind him, pulled the Frenchman’s head back and punched him in the throat with an awkward hook. As he let go of him, the man dropped, his head jarring on the tiled floor, his out-of-condition body twitching.
Ibrahim moved over to where the aluminium urinals were and tilted a heavy metal trash can. He dragged it over to a white china toilet pan in one of the empty cubicles. He squatted down and put his arms round the base of the trash can. Straining and gritting his teeth, he just managed to raise it up above the pan before swinging it down. The china shattered and a gush of water flooded out.
He dipped down and picked up a piece of the china with a serrated edge, putting it into his pocket. He pulled out a handful of tissue paper from the dispenser next to the cistern, turned and watched the water spreading across the blue-tiled floor. He dragged the trash can over to the closed entry door and wedged it against it.
Three minutes later, Ibrahim was wearing the man’s clothes. He’d taken his wallet and cellphone, too. He’d thought about slashing at the jugular with the jagged china. But knowing what would happen, he figured he couldn’t rush away quickly enough, and he’d end up covered in the blood that would burst out in a geyser; halfway to the ceiling, no doubt.
Instead, he slit the man’s wrists. He could recognize him when questioned. Besides, he deserved to bleed out, the corrupt, capitalist unbeliever deserved it. Covering the dying Frenchman with his dishdasha, Ibrahim hoped the combination of the water seepage and the can would dissuade anyone else from entering. He only needed a little more time.
He walked over to the wash basins and peered at his refection in the cle
ar mirror above, thinking he looked drawn and a decade older than his thirty-five years. He removed the false beard and hairpiece that he’d put on aboard the Turkish fishing boat before peeling off the false nose. He took a small jar from his bag and smeared the cream over his face, hands and forearms, and applied it to his thin neck before using the tissue paper to remove it.
It had been provided for him by chemists in Saudi Arabia, using a formula copied from the CIA, who used it to remove the darkening agent that deep-cover operatives and core collectors utilized when they were in the Middle East. The darkening agent had been bought from a Chinese company, and he knew that once it had been removed his disguise would be gone, too. He didn’t have a fresh supply, and tanning creams were no substitute. He walked over to another cubicle and stuffed the toilet tissue and false hair deep down into the bowl before flushing the toilet twice.
On his way to the exit door he glanced at his reflection in the stainless steel mirror. His clean-cut image made him look his age, except his black hair was flecked prematurely with grey around the sides. And his eyes, the colour of chestnuts, were furrowed in between like half-faded scars. But he wasn’t an Arab, nor was he from the Greater Middle East. He was a Caucasian, what the West called a white man.
He had five false passports and a genuine one. He looked just as he did on the photo taken five years ago for his genuine one.
An American passport.
Chapter 69
Tom pulled up outside the mall after TSM had said that this was the spot and Lester had lowered the window and had stuck his head out and had said that there was a bird in the sky.
“One thing,” Lester said. “Pretty important, too, you ask me. What does this guy we’re chasing look like?”
Tom nodded, feeling like a jerk. He hadn’t asked TSM and didn’t even know if the Frenchman knew, either.
“Long hair and beard. White robe, some say,” TSM said.
“So we’re after a Jesus lookalike,” Lester said.
TSM handed out two-way radios. “I’ll take the second floor. Lester, the first. Tom, you take the ground floor.”
With that four police cars arrived at the mall and hit the sidewalk and barrelled forwards onto the pristine lawns in front of the mall, causing muddy tyre tracks.
By the time Tom, Lester and TSM had entered the mall, a police cordon had been thrown up outside. As Lester and TSM vaulted up the escalator, Tom scanned around the small crowd. Amid the confident young women in their haute couture, the irritable children with their frazzled parents en route to kindergarten, and the pale, baggy-eyed night workers, he saw a man about the same height as him, who’d just come out of the restroom. He was dressed in an expensive blue pinstripe that didn’t fit. The arms were riding up too high on the cuffs and the trousers were a bunch of creases at the waist. Given the obvious cost of the suit it wasn’t right, Tom thought, unless he’d spent the last month on a rack being fed cabbage soup, or if it was the latest Paris fashion, which he seriously doubted.
But the guy was a clean-shaven Westerner, with a neat haircut. He noticed something that looked like blood on the white lapel of his outsized shirt, but thought it could’ve been caused by a nick as he was shaving. But there was something else, he was avoiding the CCTV cameras, putting his hands over his face, and ensuring he was out of the field of vision. He was doing his best to avoid being seen, no doubt about it.
With that the fire alarm went off. But the water sprinklers failed to function, which meant there was no fire, and that the authorities wanted to evacuate the building so that they could process everyone else inside and ensure that every inch of the mall could be searched unhindered.
The man rushed for the doorway, seemingly glad to have an excuse to run. As he left the mall through the glass doors, Tom jogged after him without really knowing why, other than his desire to be anonymous. Perhaps he had told someone he was somewhere else. Perhaps he just didn’t want to have his face on TV if they showed closed-circuit footage to jog memories.
As Tom got to the door he called out, “Hey, buddy.”
The man stopped and turned. He clearly noticed Tom staring at him and for a couple of seconds their eyes locked on one another. It wasn’t an aggressive staring competition brimming with machismo, but rather one of genuine curiosity.
Tom watched him leave the mall and show a document to a gendarme, who pointed him in the direction of a group of plain-clothes officers who were, Tom imagined, taking short statements and verifying ID. Just beyond, four black minivans pulled up, carrying, he knew, anti-terrorist police, or maybe specialist squads of Special Forces. Then an ambulance and a fire truck appeared, together with a second helicopter.
Minutes later, as the people thinned out, Tom saw a trickle of water coming from the male restroom. He didn’t believe in coincidences, so he decided to check it out. By the time he got to the door he could see that water wasn’t the only liquid emitting from the room. There was blood, too, no mistaking.
He thought about drawing his SIG, but that would cause panic and he’d likely spend the week in a cell. He pushed the door but it didn’t give at first. He shoulder barged it and, feeling the door nudge open he shoved harder, using his muscular legs. He managed to get it open wide enough to slide in.
The stench of death hit his nostrils, the sickly smell of fresh blood and the chocking odour of body waste. He gagged, seeing a body shrouded in what looked like a blood-stained sheet on the wet floor. Deciding this wasn’t a good place to be, he left.
As he prized open the door and inched out, he saw TSM talking to a big guy with a bulbous nose wearing a woollen overcoat. The guy could be a DCRI operative and the evacuation of the mall was almost complete.
Wait, he thought, TSM said that the target was wearing a white robe. Cursing himself for not checking the corpse, he considered that it could be the target, who could be Ibrahim.
Or that guy, he thought, the Westerner.
He bolted over towards TSM. But, instinctively, he knew he was too late.
Chapter 70
Ibrahim had passed through what he considered to be the cursory security checks, which he put down to his Western appearance. They hadn’t even taken a note of his passport number.
He walked for three blocks before heading for a nearby café. He flipped open the cellphone that he’d taken from the businessman. Shielding it as best he could from the downpour, he dialled a number, which he knew was a disposable cell that would be dumped afterwards. He hadn’t liked the way the man had looked at him in the mall. He hadn’t liked it at all.
He made a call to the Turkish mafia, requesting an emailed photo of the man they had held in Ankara, but who had escaped. He had a gut feeling.
He sat at an outside table, the canopy above dripping water and buckling under the weight. He ordered a coffee from a waiter in a crisp white shirt and black trousers, with knife-edge creases, who asked him in pidgin English what all the fuss was about. He said it was a security alert, although he didn’t know the details. When the waiter walked inside to get the order Ibrahim received an email on the smartphone. He clicked open the image and had to stop himself from widening his eyes and curling back his lips.
It was the man in the mall. The man called Tom Dupree, the special agent in the US Bureau of Diplomatic Security. A very capable and dangerous man, he’d heard from the Turks.
He made a second call, this time to a local number, but another disposable cell. Mohammed had given him the number of a small jihadist cell in the Paris suburbs, and the number was used exclusively for incoming distress calls. They could help out. They could follow people. They could make people disappear.
When it was picked up, he said, “I need the Somalis. Now.”
After he’d forwarded the email of the photo of Tom Dupree to the brother on the other end of the phone and had given them the address of the mall, he made a mental note to drop the cellphone down a storm drain. He’d take the notes from the wallet and dump that too.
He
was on the move. But Tom Dupree would never leave France, he was sure of that.
Chapter 71
As Tom had expected there had been no sign of the Western man he had seen coming out of the restroom, no record of him, either. Lester had given a short statement like everyone else, but Tom had had to give a detailed one, and had had to give an address in Paris where he could be contacted again. TSM had stepped in then and the DCRI had cut Tom a little slack after the Frenchman had said he could vouch for him and that he’d be staying with him. After that they’d been held up for a further two hours by the chaos outside the mall, by the sectioned off street, and the traffic jams caused by the response and emergency vehicles.
Tom was driving along another Paris street now, with Lester riding shotgun, and TSM in the back. They were heading for TSM’s upscale apartment in Meudon. The municipality in the south-western suburbs of the city was built on a landscape of hills and valleys overlooking the Seine. But the spectacular views, a characteristic of the area, weren’t visible today. The rain was coming down in sheets, the sky a mass of charcoal-grey clouds, fat with moisture.
“We gotta tail,” Tom said.
“Are you sure?” TSM asked.
Tom thought it was an odd question, given his own credentials, and he’d seen the metallic silver BMW, an old model, following them since they’d left the street on which the mall was situated.
Lester spoke without turning around. “Anyone knows if we gotta tail, it’s Tom. Trained for it, ain’t ya, Tom?”
“It’s a silver BMW,” Tom said.
“Turn off the sat nav,” TSM said “I know some backstreets where you can lose them.”
Tom rechecked the rearview. There were two black men in the BMW, possibly more sitting behind. He decided to act.
As they got to a western side of the town, about seven miles from the centre of Paris, close to a large wood, Tom pulled up around a sharp left-hand bend. The street was lined with chestnut trees and limestone houses, with wrought-iron railings. They were all painted in various shades of beige, with black windowsills and original exteriors, houses that had been spared the terrible ravages of the Luftwaffe in World War Two due to Paris’s open city policy.