The Paris Betrayal

by James R. Hannibal

  “Giselle. Yes. Her flat is two blocks west.”

  Clara’s gaze shifted up the street. “Good. I’m only minutes away from a shower.”

  “Hours, actually.”

  The look she gave him said she wished she’d brought her bludgeoning rock along.

  Ben let out a frustrated grunt. “Giselle won’t be at her flat, okay? And I’ve never set foot in the place. We keep our personal and professional identities well clear of each other. She has another place, one nobody knows about but us.”

  “How far?”

  “Almost five kilometers. The cottage is in Chaville, on the far side of the Meudon Forest Reserve. But first . . .” He slowed as they approached the next street corner. “A little shopping.”

  “Not another burner phone.” She turned to stand in front of him, scratching Otto’s ears. “Remember how well that went last time?”

  He sensed from her wry expression that she knew the real reason he’d stopped—the reason he needed to risk exposing his face to security cameras at an all-night pharmacy. She knew. He felt it. But he told her anyway. “We have to deal with your hair.”

  “You’ve always hated this color.”

  “Funny. But this isn’t about fashion. It’s about disappearing. Pick a new color, and I’ll go in and get it for you.”

  Her lips parted with a reply.

  Ben held up a finger. “If you say purple or green, I’m out of here. No pink either.”

  She dropped her gaze. “Yeah. Okay.”

  “What’s your natural color?”

  “Boring.”

  He didn’t have time for this. “Stay here. Keep the dog quiet.”

  The young clerk at the register kept his eyes buried in a phone. That suited Ben fine, until he saw his own picture in the kid’s Twitter feed—a grainy shot of him dragging Clara backward with a gun to her head. The photographer had snapped the shot from high up, probably through the window of a nearby building. The clerk scrolled on.

  Had he seen it?

  Ben snatched up a basket and picked out a box of dye marked Autumn Sunrise in four languages. The wavy locks in the picture looked amber to him, but what did he know? He dropped it in the basket and added a half dozen other items on his way to the counter.

  “Bonjour.” The clerk kept scrolling his Twitter feed. With the other hand, he ran Ben’s items across the scanner and dropped them into a plastic bag. “Comptant ou carte de crédit?”

  Ben slapped down a fifty-euro note. He had several midsize bills left, thanks in part to the cash he’d taken from Duval. But if he, Giselle, and Clara had to hold out on their own for a couple of days or more before getting Company help, he might have to find someone willing to break a five hundred.

  The clerk punched a button to kick open the register drawer and counted out the change. “Merci.”

  Ben headed for the street.

  “Wait.”

  He stopped, watching the rounded mirror above the door. For the first time since he’d walked in, the clerk had looked up from his phone.

  “I forgot to scan the bag. They are fifteen cents.”

  Ben rubbed his eyes to obscure his face as he returned to the counter, playing the part of a man still in need of his morning coffee. Through his fingers, he spied his picture once more on the kid’s Twitter feed. Same pic, different post. Below the main text, he saw #savethedachshund.

  Great.

  He held up the bag for the kid to scan.

  “I am sorry.” The clerk ran a handheld laser over the barcode. “But my manager—he does not like it when I forget.”

  Ben set a one-euro coin on the counter. “Keep the change.” He walked out.

  The forest reserve began one street to the south, after an abrupt end to the city—a twelve-hundred-acre reserve with soccer fields and cricket pitches nestled among its oaks and chestnuts. The most direct route to the cottage involved more than four kilometers of trails, but Ben led Clara an extra five hundred meters out of the way to a runners’ club called Le Sentier.

  They hadn’t officially opened for the day, but Ben slipped the manager a hundred—well above the cost of a locker rental—then walked Clara around the long green cinderblock building to the women’s locker room. “You mentioned wanting a shower. There’s no need to make you wait. Besides, we should change your hair color sooner than later.” He gave her the bag from the pharmacy. “I’m fairly certain you know how this works.”

  She opened the plastic bag and peeked inside. “So do you. Shampoo. Applicator. Gloves. You’ve done this before.”

  “The need to change my appearance comes up a lot in my line of work.”

  Clara lifted out a bag of gummy bears. “And this?”

  “You said you were hungry. And . . .” He glanced away, keeping an eye on their six. At least, that’s what he told himself. “I, uh . . . I’ve seen those in your groceries once or twice when we’ve bumped into each other in the stairwell.”

  That earned him a smile. “Give me a few minutes, okay?”

  “Yeah. Sure.” He retreated to a wooden bench across the trail.

  A few minutes became twenty, then twenty-five. A couple of customers went in. Ben watched the sky through the bare oak branches with growing unease. Only the most diehard runners hit the forest trails in the dark of a winter’s morning. That would change once the sun came up. Hikers. Runners. Too many people who might have seen the social media posts. Why’d the Twitterati have to make such a fuss about the dog? He glanced down at Otto. “You’re going to get us all killed, you know.”

  The dachshund lowered his chin to his paws.

  Clara emerged a moment later, and Ben hopped up, more quickly than he’d intended. She’d pulled her hair back into a tousled ponytail, now a light amber brown. She did a slow twirl. “Well?”

  She looked different. She looked good. “Uh . . . Good work with the dye.”

  “Yes. Because ‘good work’ is what every girl wants to hear about her new hairstyle.” Clara kneeled, calling Otto to her side. She scratched his chin. “I will say, you matched my natural color. How did you know?”

  “Seemed right for you. That’s all.” It did seem right, more so than the blue, which he realized now had never let her eyes take center stage. He cleared his throat. “Let’s go. We’re losing our darkness.”

  Ben set a quick pace on the trail, gauging how fast he could move without leaving her behind. As they found their rhythm, a cross breeze brought a scent to his nose. Lavender. Ben had bought Clara a small bottle of generic shampoo. No scent. “Where’d the soap come from?”

  “I borrowed some body wash from a runner. Nice girl.”

  He tried not to growl.

  She looked up at him. “I didn’t tell her anything.”

  “You didn’t have to. There’s no way she missed the fact you were dyeing your hair.”

  “She would have noticed anyway. And I spent the night in a tiny boat on a dirty river with an angry, smelly spy. I needed some pampering. Sue me.”

  “I don’t smell.”

  Clara raised an eyebrow. “Mm-hmm. So, this woman. Giselle.”

  Ben’s answer came as quick as his steps. “She won’t mind.”

  “Won’t mind what?”

  It took him a full second to realize Clara had moved past the spent-the-night-together-in-a-skiff topic to a new one. “Nothing. What were you saying?”

  “How long have you been seeing each other?”

  “A few weeks.”

  “And this is enough to know you love her?”

  The question’s abruptness nearly cost him his footing. A runner passed by, giving him time to compose his answer. “A few days ago, Giselle risked getting infected with the plague just to kiss me. We’ve never said the words, but if that’s not love, I don’t know what is.”

  Clara stopped, letting him shoot out ahead.

  Ben frowned and beckoned her onward with a tilt of his head. “No, I don’t have the plague. I got checked out.”

  “
If you say so.”

  “I do. The doc gave me a clean bill of health. Now hurry up.”

  The more trail they covered, the less Ben worried that this lavender-scented girl meant him harm. His earlier suspicions seemed almost comical. He’d been watching her for signs of deception, and seen none. And if Clara had a transmitter to give away his position, she’d had plenty of chances to use it. No cops had come. No Leviathan assassins had appeared on the trail.

  Whatever Clara’s real story, Ben felt confident he and Giselle could handle her together. Whether at home or in a hotel, Giselle always answered the door armed, and Ben had two guns and his KA-BAR. Clara had a yippy dog.

  The forest thinned. Ahead, their trail ended at a T intersection, where it split to wrap around a small lake. Ben pointed. “There, the redbrick cottage on the other side. The one with the dock and the cream-colored Peugeot 308 in the drive.”

  Caution and training prevented Ben from caving in to his desire to run around the lake. He led Clara off the trail, into the trees. They found a dry patch of dead leaves, colored orange by the rising sun, and he kneeled to unshoulder his pack. He fished a sniper scope from the side pouch and held it to his eye.

  Clara hung close, as if by leaning against him she might be able to see through the scope as well. “Is she there?”

  “The Peugeot is hers. She bought it last summer. I’m just confirming.”

  “And she’ll be alone?”

  “Yes.” He didn’t see any movement at the perimeter. More than a hundred meters of lakeshore separated her place from the nearest cottages to the northeast and southwest—vacation homes, empty through the winter. Giselle had been prudent in her choice. “She told me she paid cash. Untraceable. The place is clean.”

  A light flipped on in the kitchen.

  Giselle.

  The blinds blocked his view, but it had to be her. She’d never been an early riser—hated predawn starts to their operations. He could hear her voice now, pouring herself a cup of coffee. I hate getting up in the dark. It seems so unnatural, yes?

  “She’s there,” Ben said, rising to his feet. He couldn’t wait any longer. He glanced down to stuff the scope into his bag, and a deafening explosion shattered the morning calm.

  21

  Ben sprinted down the lakeshore trail, a maddening circular route of nearly a quarter mile. And all the while, the fire burned.

  Maybe she had survived. Maybe she had seen the bomb and taken cover before it blew. He’d walked through the cottage with her during some stolen time together before the team left for Morocco. The kitchen had a modern fridge. Free-standing. Or the cast-iron radiator in the mudroom might offer some protection.

  The radiator.

  “Giselle, get out! Get out!”

  The cottage had central heating, fueled by a forty-year-old oil tank in the cellar. The realtor had boasted about the owner refilling the tank without adding a cent to the asking price, enough for two winters—three thousand liters of oil.

  The massive secondary explosion knocked him off his feet, stopping him within thirty meters of his goal. Ben rolled onto his side, ears ringing. “No!”

  The fire burned with a new intensity. The oil had set the hedges and grass ablaze. He forced himself up again, tried to push closer. By the time he reached the drive, the heat had formed an impenetrable wall.

  He wanted to cry out, but his voice had no strength left.

  “Ben!” Clara jogged up behind him, shouting over the roar. “There’s nothing you can do.”

  He turned, whipping out the Glock. “You.” Instinct. Autopilot. Only Ben and Giselle knew about the cottage. No one else. No one except Clara. “You did this.”

  She backed away, Otto cowering at her ankles. “What? Why would I?”

  “You’re part of this. You’re with Leviathan. The woman in Rome. Did you kill Massir? Were you the assassin who met him at the Pantheon? We both know you brained Duval before he could give me answers.”

  Her pupils darted left and right, either searching for a handle on the moment or searching for a lie. “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

  “The intercepted call. The cops in the train station. Duval showing up at the cathedral. All of that was you.”

  “You’re insane. Listen to yourself. I heard Duval tell you how he found us. I hit him to stop him from shooting you. Think, Ben. This is the grief talking.”

  The fire department would be coming soon. The police too. Ben’s head throbbed. He pressed what he thought was a knuckle against his temple, then felt the heat and realized it was the barrel of his Glock.

  Clara took a step toward him, reaching. He answered with his own advance, putting the gun to her throat. Then he changed his mind and swept up her dog. Ben knew how to settle this. He put the gun to the dachshund’s head and growled through his teeth. “The truth. Tell me who you work for, or watch me blow Otto’s little head off.” If it weren’t for his grief, he’d have felt ridiculous, but he needed to know her motives.

  “No. Please, Ben.” She broke down into sobs. “Listen to me. I am not this person you think I am. Please don’t hurt him.”

  The backpack lay on the trail, a dozen meters or more away. In his hurry and distress, Ben had left it behind. Clara had brought it for him, but at no time had she gone for either weapon inside—the KA-BAR or the revolver. She didn’t have an assassin’s instincts.

  He lowered the gun to his side and pressed Otto into her arms. “Okay.”

  She sniffled. “Okay? Okay what?”

  “Okay, I believe you. Assassins and spies don’t have dogs. They can’t be tied down. And your tears tell me Otto is no prop.”

  “Threatening to shoot him. This was a test?”

  He holstered his weapon. “I’m sorry.”

  Clara took one step closer and slapped him across the face. “You are a monster.”

  “I know.” He wandered over to the Peugeot, running on the same autopilot that had drawn his gun. “The police are coming. We have to keep running.”

  The Peugeot had survived the blast, minus the passenger side windows and mirror. Ben kicked out a patch of flame on the front right tire and tucked his hand into his jacket sleeve to knock burning debris off the roof and hood. He brushed the shattered glass off the passenger seat and stood clear, pulling the door wide for Clara and her dog. “Get in.”

  She didn’t argue, though he knew she had every reason to walk away.

  On the way around the hood to the driver’s side, a chunk of black plastic caught Ben’s eye, lying on the drive’s white gravel. It looked like a corner fragment of a small box, with insulated wire and a piece of silicone chip melted to the interior. Definitely not a piece of the car. He slipped it into his pocket and dropped to a knee to hotwire the ignition under the daggers of Clara’s glare.

  “I really am sorry,” he said, getting behind the wheel. “I had to be sure you were telling the truth.”

  She let out a huff. “Just drive.”

  Numbness.

  Ben couldn’t feel pain anymore, not the bruise under his eye from Hagen’s fist or the double knot on the back of his head from the crash into the mirror and the strike from Duval’s gun. He felt only tingling numbness, like a man phasing out of existence, leaving nothing in the place of his flesh and bone but rage.

  The explosion had drawn witnesses who saw the Peugeot leaving the scene. The police would find them, get descriptions. Ben kept to the side roads in a maddening zigzag race for the western border.

  “I’m sorry,” Clara said thirty minutes into the journey.

  “For what.”

  “For your loss. I’m still angry with you for the accusations—for threatening Otto—but I can see Giselle was both love and dear friend to you. And these people you are fighting. They took her. I’m sorry.”

  “She knew the risks of our profession. We both did. We walked into the job and the relationship with our eyes open.”

  Clara turned in her seat, scowling. “What an idioti
c thing to say.”

  Her audacity shook him from his daze. “What do you know about it?”

  “You think I haven’t heard this phrase before? Hmm? ‘He knew the risks.’ Is this supposed to bring anyone comfort?”

  He knew the risks. The hurt in her voice spoke of someone she loved. He. “Your brother.”

  “I told you Peter took my father’s anger for me. He stayed as long as I needed protecting, but when I went off to art school in Bratislava, he took his chance. He joined the army.”

  “The Slovak Ground Forces?” From what Ben knew about the organization—mostly a shooting club for Soviet-era artillery enthusiasts—the job carried little danger.

  “No. The British army. He called ours a joke, and the Brits offered him citizenship for service.” Clara hugged Otto tight. “Peter passed an English test at our village church. Seven months later, he finished training as a nurse in their Army Medical Service. Three months after that, he died in a UK hospital. He’d contracted COVID-19 from a patient. A messenger service delivered the letter to our doorstep.” She laughed. “A letter. Nothing more. Not the journal he kept. No dog tags. I took the bus home from Bratislava to read it for Father, because his English is terrible. But he must have figured it out. He drank himself into oblivion before I arrived.”

  Ben remembered thumbing through her book—the sketch of the man passed out at a mechanic’s worktable. He had seen it as a study of an old drunk. But Clara had sketched a study in grief.

  “‘He knew the risks,’” she said, spitting out the words. “Peter’s commander wrote that in his letter. ‘He was brave. He knew the risks.’ How are those any comfort?”

  Ben kept quiet, eyes on the road.

  “No one asked me about the risks. No one asked Father. And Peter signed up to escape our home, to find a better life, not to become some cog in their machine. Expendable. There is a phrase for it.” She rubbed her forehead, as if trying to recall. “I found it on the internet, the percentage of soldiers who will die, written into the general’s plan.”

  “Acceptable loss.”

  She looked at him, eyes full of tears. “Yes. But it is not acceptable. My brother. Your Giselle. The deaths of those we love are never acceptable.”