Assassin's Code

by Ward Larsen

  “Gravelines … no, nothing of importance. One more crisis averted. Let’s get back to finding these two.”

  “Of course, sir,” said a deflated LeFevre. The eagerness of the chase she felt was apparently not shared by her soon-to-be boss.

  She was nearly to the door when Baland forestalled her departure with, “Tell me something, Charlotte … is LeFevre your maiden name?”

  A bewildered LeFevre turned back around. “Well … yes, sir, it is.”

  “But you are married.”

  “Of course. I kept my maiden name for professional reasons. My husband’s name is Weiss.”

  “Ah, yes. I remember now. I met him at the New Year’s party—Avrim. And you have two boys?”

  “That’s right,” she said, thinking the trajectory of the conversation odd. “Eight and ten.”

  “If you don’t mind my asking … do you raise them in the Jewish faith?”

  “We do, yes. We attend Temple Beth Israel every Saturday. Why do you ask?”

  Baland smiled a smile that was benevolence itself. “Temple Beth Israel—yes, I know exactly where that is. Isn’t it wonderful how people of different faiths can live together so agreeably in France? Always remember that, Charlotte—it’s what we’re fighting for.”

  She nodded.

  “Keep up the good work.”

  LeFevre took this as her cue to leave. Once in the outer office, with the door closed behind her, she looked at Baland’s receptionist, a sprightly older woman, and mouthed the words, Is he all right?

  The woman smiled understandingly, and whispered back, “He’s been under a great deal of stress lately.”

  LeFevre started back to the command center, thinking, Aren’t we all.

  On the other side of the door, Zavier Baland walked to the far side of the room. He stood motionless in front of the great window, taking in the evening landscape of Rue de Villiers and Paris beyond.

  SEVENTY-ONE

  It was a morning made for a ceremony. The air was crisp and the skies clear, an apology for the preceding days. A steady breeze had the tricolor fluttering smartly on its staff in front of the majestic dome at Hôtel des Invalides.

  The improved weather had extracted pent-up crowds, but few grasped the substance of the ceremony being assembled on the museum’s forecourt plaza. Most of the tourists who paused in their languid strolls thought it might have something to do with Napoléon, whose body lay interred nearby. Parisians enjoying their weekend expressed a passing interest, but they’d seen such affairs before. Least attentive of all were pairs of young lovers strolling the Seine, who cast barely a glance, their fuzzy heads swimming with remembrances of the previous night’s wine and ardor.

  Jacques Roland, minister of the interior, stood officiously at the podium while a dozen department heads mingled behind him. A hundred chairs had been brought in for an audience, but at five minutes before nine only half were full. Most of those who’d come were department personnel, along with a few upward-aspiring commanders from the various regional divisions.

  The man at the center of it all, Zavier Baland, was not disappointed in the turnout. In truth he found it encouraging, a sign that the bulk of the country’s counterterrorism forces were exhausted, taking time off to sleep and catch up with their families after the long shifts of recent days. For the same reason, media coverage of the ceremony was virtually nonexistent—a pair of junior reporters from competing dailies had shown up to go through the motions.

  Baland saw Jacqueline in the front row, but the girls had gone off to their regular Saturday language lesson. He and Jacqueline had argued about that, but Baland prevailed, insisting that their daughters’ education took a higher priority. In the moments after the matter was settled, it occurred to Baland that the decision might well be his last involvement in their lives.

  He would issue his orders to attack the Jews of France later today. When the ceremony ended, he would attend a luncheon at headquarters—there was no avoiding it, since he was the guest of honor—but he had otherwise cleared his calendar. At four o’clock the first burst message was set to be transmitted. He’d done his best to pair trigger-ready cells with targets appropriate for their weapons. Others, those individuals with more intent than means, he decided to keep in reserve for a second wave. A month from now, perhaps two—however long it took for France to let her guard down again.

  Baland accepted that a percentage of the strikes would fail. He would be issuing the orders without forewarning, and he knew that no soldiers, even committed jihadists, liked being sent into action on short notice. On the other hand, many had been awaiting the call, some for years. Even by his most pessimistic estimate, he was confident that dozens of Jewish targets would be struck in the coming days. The police forces of France, already fatigued and scattered across the country, would be caught flat-footed by the scale of the new offensive.

  The voice of the protocol officer interrupted his calculations. “Three minutes, everyone.”

  Baland began edging toward the podium, where Roland was pulling notes from his pocket—no doubt his prepared remarks.

  “Monsieur Director!”

  The title sounded strange, but Baland’s attention was snagged by the voice. He half turned to see Charlotte LeFevre approaching. Or as he now thought of her, Charlotte Weiss.

  “I know there isn’t much time, sir, but you asked to see the hourly as soon as it was available.”

  “We only have a moment,” he said. “Is there anything new on this business in Courbevoie?”

  “There is one peculiarity. The blood we recovered from the carpet in the room—it wasn’t blood at all.”

  He looked at her curiously. “What was it then?”

  LeFevre referenced her phone. “Corn syrup, cocoa, and red food dye. Simple, but very convincing. I’m not sure what to make of it.”

  Baland said nothing. The protocol officer looked pointedly at LeFevre, and said, “One minute.”

  She backed away, saying, “We can discuss it further after the ceremony.” She scurried away and took a seat in the back row.

  Baland heard someone whisper his name, and saw Roland beckoning him closer to the podium. He had been instructed to stand at the minister’s right shoulder for the duration of his remarks, which were to last roughly fifteen minutes. Baland edged closer and stood very still, trying to make sense of what LeFevre had just told him.

  Roland began to speak. It was on the last word of his morning welcome, with the sun reflecting off Napoléon’s golden dome, that the bullet crashed into Zavier Baland’s skull.

  * * *

  Everyone heard the shot, followed by a distinct echo.

  LeFevre saw Baland go down, and a frantic scramble of bodies ensued. Someone tackled Roland to the ground and covered him protectively. On realizing what had happened, most simply ran. A few took cover behind statues, and a handful of others, likely men and women with military experience, jumped into the empty moat surrounding the plaza—the best foxhole in all Paris.

  LeFevre flew into action. She was the first to reach Baland’s side, and therefore the first to see it was hopeless. The bullet had struck above his left ear, and the damage was catastrophic. His eyes were locked in a forever gaze into a faultless morning sky.

  LeFevre looked all around, and saw chaos in every quarter. She had no idea where the shot had come from.

  SEVENTY-TWO

  The principals were bundled away in armored limousines. When five minutes passed without further gunfire, a response began to organize on the stone plaza. Because LeFevre was dressed as a civilian, she flashed her senior DGSI credentials to every uniform in sight. She was soon the on-scene commander.

  The mystery regarding the source of the shot was quickly resolved. A nearby policeman who’d been doing his job—looking outward from the ceremony and not watching it—reported seeing a small puff of smoke, and perhaps a muzzle flash, from a spot above the scaffolding that fronted the Colombian embassy. By the time his story reached LeF
evre, fifteen minutes had passed since the shooting, and an armored vehicle with a tactical response team was just arriving. The team had been on alert for forty-eight hours, but there was no weariness or lack of urgency in anyone’s step as they fanned into position. LeFevre briefed the commander, and they quickly pinpointed the shooter’s hide above the embassy entrance. An assault squad of four men was dispatched, and sixty seconds after they scaled the platform and disappeared behind the high wall, the leader waved an all-clear signal.

  The commander and LeFevre were next up, making use of a ladder that was resting against the scaffolding. Thirty feet above the sidewalk they followed the squad leader inside a narrow gap behind the exterior wall. Everyone looked down at the body of a thickset young woman. She was resting facedown, one arm bent awkwardly under her torso, and her opposing shoulder was still pressed against the butt of a rifle. There was a gaping wound on her temple. Perhaps out of habit, one of the tactical men said something about calling an ambulance.

  Another member of the squad emerged from deep in the crawlspace, and said, “There are tools in back, including a big masonry drill.”

  The commander acknowledged the information, then looked at LeFevre.

  She knelt down and took the liberty of half rolling the body. One side of the woman’s head was destroyed, but her face, dark-skinned and with a prominent curving nose, was relatively undamaged. LeFevre was quite sure she was looking at the fugitive they’d been after, the woman who’d shot Director Michelis.

  She tried to put together the sequence of what had happened, but saw only half an answer. Then she noticed the commander and his squad leader inspecting something near the wall. LeFevre got up and joined them.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  The commander pointed to the rifle, which was trained outward through a vertical slot. “I would say this is your assassin. Her weapon lines up perfectly with where the director was standing. Ballistics will easily confirm it.”

  “I can see that much. But who shot her? One of ours?”

  He cocked his head. “If any policeman did this, they would have taken credit by now.” The commander gave her a circumspect look. “Tell me—how many shots did you hear?”

  “Only one … although, I do remember a very distinct echo.”

  The commander exchanged a glance with his senior subordinate. “Check into it,” he said.

  The man nodded and disappeared.

  “Check into what?” LeFevre asked.

  The commander leaned down and looked through a second hole in the wall. It was far smaller than the first, and very near where the body was resting.

  “Do you think she drilled these holes?” LeFevre asked.

  “Most likely.”

  “Was the smaller one a mistake? Maybe drilled at the wrong angle?”

  The commander stifled a response. He stood and gestured for LeFevre to have a look through the smaller aperture. She knelt down a second time, and found herself peering through a circular hollow the diameter of a soda can. It gave a pinhole view across the terrace of Invalides, then down the length of Rue de Grenelle, where traffic ran oblivious to the nearby tragedy.

  “I don’t see anything,” said LeFevre.

  “Neither do I. But I think we should have a closer look.”

  * * *

  It took less than an hour to discover the second shooter’s perch.

  The tactical team commander picked out the building with remarkable acuity. During a long walk up Rue de Grenelle, and with regular glances over his shoulder, he had paused suddenly where the road made a slight bend. Beyond that, Invalides would no longer be in sight. Directly in front of them stood a tall residential complex.

  Forensic teams were brought in quickly and swarmed through the building. Operating under the commander’s guiding principle, they began searching residences that had a line of sight to the distant embassy. Of particular interest was a vacant unit that had recently gone up for sale. How the killer had gained access to the home would be thrashed out later, but there was no denying what everyone saw within seconds of going inside. A perfectly round hole, roughly ten inches in diameter, had been cut from an east-facing window—the circle of glass removed was on the floor beneath, still attached to a suction cup. Across the room, a chair had been pulled up to the granite kitchen island. It was here that the most definitive evidence was discovered—a technician confirmed traces of gunshot residue on the stylish green granite.

  LeFevre stood next to the commander as technicians began going over the place. She said, “So this is it—he was here.”

  “I’m convinced,” the commander replied. He turned to face her. “You just said ‘he.’ What makes you think it was a man?”

  “An educated guess,” she hedged.

  The commander didn’t belabor the point. He looked around the kitchen floor. “I don’t see a casing. It’s all very professional.”

  Looking into the distance, LeFevre recognized the reverse view of what she’d seen through the tiny hole in the embassy wall—the building in which they were standing would have been somewhere in that urban picture. Then she remembered something else. “The echo I heard. It wasn’t an echo at all. He shot her right after she killed Baland.”

  The commander nodded. “Almost instantaneously. With his scope trained on the smaller opening in the wall, his field of view would easily have included the larger one. He would have seen the muzzle flash of her shot. I’d guess his bullet arrived about four seconds later. Three if he was very good. At that point, she would have been looking through her own scope to confirm her shot.” He left the rest unsaid. “It’s a classic countersniper kill.”

  “Countersniper,” she repeated rhetorically. LeFevre looked searchingly across the park. “How far away is that?”

  “Seven hundred and eighty-one meters.”

  She looked at him incredulously.

  He patted his tactical vest. “We carry laser range finders—I took a quick shot.”

  “But that opening we saw … you’re telling me he put a bullet through a tennis-ball can from almost half a mile away. I don’t see how anyone could do that.”

  “Anyone? Certainly not. But there are a few who might. In truth, he got a little lucky. I saw marks on the inner walls of your ‘tennis-ball can.’ The bullet grazed the stone and ricocheted. Judging by the assassin’s wound, I would say the round tumbled the last half meter. At that point it hardly mattered. The velocity was sufficient, and the round was heading through a tunnel to a target only inches away.”

  LeFevre’s gaze fixed on the distant Colombian embassy. She could barely see the front door, let alone the tiny aperture. She heaved out a sigh. “What else?”

  The commander regarded the distant building. “I see one other thing that suggests a professional—although it’s quite circumstantial.”

  LeFevre only waited for an explanation.

  “You see … he didn’t take a follow-up shot. It would have been quite easy to do. From here the shooter had no way to see his target. He knew where she was and how to reach her, but there was no way to tell if she was struck by the first round.”

  “So why didn’t he shoot again?”

  “I’ve been wondering that myself, and can think of only one reason.” He turned to face her. “Whoever your man is—he is very confident in his abilities.”

  SEVENTY-THREE

  Windsom swung lazily on her anchor in a halfhearted trade wind. She was laid up in the lee of a half-moon cove, a nameless spit of sand somewhere north of Papua. The sea shimmered in the early light, shades of blue on the surface reflecting what lay beneath—the dark shadows of coral heads twenty feet down, lighter shades speaking of a bleached-sand bottom.

  Christine secured Davy’s life jacket and lowered him into the runabout.

  “Birds!” he said eagerly, pointing to the island.

  “Not now,” she said. “We’ll go ashore later.”

  The two of them had explored the cay yesterday. They’d found
two palm trees and a few stands of grass between them. A certain species of tern had taken to nesting on the high ground, battling a certain species of crab for real estate above the tide line. Davy had enjoyed walking among the birds, who seemed to have no fear of humans.

  This morning, however, they had a different destination. Probably the only other destination within a hundred miles.

  Her name was Mistral, and she’d arrived four days ago. Neighbors for as long as their respective anchors held. The Smiths were from New Zealand, a couple slightly older than her and David. They had a nine-year-old girl named Nina, who was getting along famously with Davy.

  “Nina?” Davy asked as Christine navigated the hundred yards to Mistral.

  “Yes, Nina!”

  Davy bounced happily on the wooden seat. Play dates on the high sea were a rare event, and for that reason the children’s age difference fell to irrelevance. John and Linda were already on deck, coffee in hand. Their Beneteau 55 was longer than Windsom, a handsome boat but without the utilitarian width of a catamaran.

  “Good morning!” Christine hailed as she idled the runabout toward a boarding ladder and tied on.

  “Good morning,” said John. He helped Davy up the ladder. “Coffee’s on.”

  “Sounds wonderful.” Once aboard, Christine exchanged a hug with the adults, and watched as Nina collected Davy and took him below. She’d known these people for only a few days, but they already seemed like family—a familiarity brought on, she knew, by their shared isolation.

  “Dinner at my place tonight?” Christine asked.

  “By all means,” Linda said. “What can I bring?”

  “How about a few of those lobster John’s been snagging?”

  “Done.”

  They chatted for a time, John his usual gregarious self—a seemingly universal Kiwi trait, in Christine’s experience. Linda, however, was more subdued, and by the time John went below to feed the children, Christine was feeling uneasy.