Goodbye Paris

by Mike Bond

  “I don’t believe it.” The idea that Thierry might have been sabotaging us was nuts. The Thierry I’d known in Afghanistan would always put his buddies first. Would never screw things up. Not ever.

  Halfway around the world Mitchell snickered. “I didn’t believe it either.”

  “What you mean?”

  “It was a fraud. Somebody’s been setting him up, but it’s not well done.”

  “You’re losing me, Mitchell.”

  “They hacked his bank accounts and made deposits at certain dates, then wired them to accounts in Pakistan and Dubai set up in his name. From there the usual to the Caribbean then European banks. To somewhere safe in Switzerland. They made your buddy Thierry look like a crooked millionaire.”

  “Why didn’t he see this?”

  “He got a different version. Only bank investigators can see it. That and the French government, if and when they decide to take him down.”

  “Why would they?”

  “If he finds something inconvenient.”

  It was all so easy, I realized, these days. “It doesn’t hold together ...”

  “But looks good on the surface. Thierry doesn’t even know.”

  “The phone?”

  “They just hacked his history. My grandmother could do that –”

  “Who’s behind this?”

  “I’m not there yet.”

  “You mean you’ve discovered this but don’t know who’s doing it?”

  “That’s what I just said.”

  So how to find whoever was spreading this rumor, Thierry’s alleged hits on jihadi sites, the falsified bank accounts and phone connections? They were doing this to render him ineffective, to banish him.

  “How do we use this?” I said. “And counter it?”

  —

  WHEN THIERRY AND I went through a DGSE neutral site to check his accounts, nothing was amiss. No illicit payments. His cellphone had never been cracked.

  “There’s nothing wrong here,” Thierry said angrily.

  “There was.”

  “You’re chasing phantoms.” He shook his head. “Keep your eye on the target.”

  “There was.” I sat exasperatedly in front of his desk. “I swear it.”

  He leaned back. “You getting enough sleep?”

  “No.”

  He stood, distanced, wanting me to leave. “Maybe you should.”

  This was not the Thierry I’d known. Again, my instinct told me he was hiding something from me. Why? This was totally unlike him. Comrades in combat become nearly brothers. Afterwards, they don’t mislead or fool each other.

  I hated being the bearer of bad news. Particularly when the bad news had vanished.

  —

  I WALKED OUT OF THIERRY’S OFFICE into a gray Paris afternoon. My phone throbbed. Mitchell once again.

  “So what you got?”

  “More background ... That ever since Mitterrand came to power in 1981 till Hollande and his nutty crew left in 2017, part of the government has intentionally sold France down the river. Because of the money they get from the Middle East.”

  “Yeah, yeah, that we know.”

  “And the media, led by Le Monde and public TV and radio, whose executives of course are appointed by the government, ran a vast campaign to convince the French that, One, millions of illegal migrants are good for the economy, which has turned out to be very wrong, and Two, that France’s long tradition of human rights protection demands that it respond with open arms to everyone – which turned out to be absolutely everyone, and thus disastrous.”

  “Get to the point, bro.”

  “Because most French media have long been subsidized by the government, the media stays nice. But there was one outlet that wouldn’t stay nice, that continued to speak the truth, however raw and unpleasant ...”

  “Charly Hebdo.” This too was old news.

  “And it only cost them twelve lives when those Muslims came through the door and shot them one by one.”

  “What you’re saying is?”

  “Either do what you’re told, or look out.”

  Evil Personified

  THE INDIAN HAD BEEN RELEASED from motorcycle hospital after being repaired from when the Romanian girl was shot, so Anne took off for a day to see Mamie and the kids in Normandy.

  I watched her go with some trepidation, but knew the bike was free of bugs and there was no possible way anyone could go fast enough to follow her. And as usual she’d been immune to any concerns of danger, snapped at me, “I do what I want,” and roared off.

  I’d wanted to go with her, wanted to see the kids. Even though I’d spent little time with them I felt a tug of attachment, a desire to protect and nurture. That the kids were hers made all the difference. Her blood, her DNA, her beautiful, complicated soul.

  Until now, children had always seemed to me an adjunct part of life. My ex-SF buddies who’d had kids changed completely, were rapturously preoccupied and harassed by these little beings, had fallen out of shape and some were even working on dad bellies. That had seemed to me a terrifying prospect.

  I’d also wanted to see the unconquerable Mamie and meet her wild cousin Claudine. I yearned for emotional contact, to be in the presence of love, children and hope for the future.

  —

  THE CAMERAS we’d put in Anne’s place weren’t getting any action. We’d set up a semblance of occupation, lights on and off, a DGSI agent who looked like her had come and gone several times, always with what we’d hoped was invisible backup; as of yet no bad guys had shown up.

  But something kept me coming back to check out the place. It was the kind of intuitive stuff I usually ignore, unlike Anne and her dreams of Mustafa. As Nisa had warned me at one point, “Whoever tried to kill Anne will try again. In their world, when you’ve screwed up, your reputation’s on the line. And probably your life: you have to make it right or die. Worse, it makes the whole organization more visible, more vulnerable. More angry.”

  I was pretty angered too, by everything that was happening and not happening in this investigation, and exhausted on top of that. Still I again made myself take the 8 Métro from Commerce to République and wandered down Rue du Temple to Anne’s block.

  It was getting dark, another of those lonely Paris nights. I took a table at the corner café. I was dressed in the traditional black Paris windbreaker, faded jeans and running shoes, unlikely to appear out of place in the quartier. I ordered a Monaco, a beer and grenadine concoction beloved by the French but which I detest – few foreigners ever drink it, thus it made good cover – and sat outside the café in a corner protected from the cold wind by a huge plastic Danon sign, reading another annoying tract called Libération.

  The French are very enamored of this word, partially because of common myths about the 1789 Revolution, portraying it as far more wonderful than the horrendous slaughter it actually was. And partially because they can’t ignore that the Americans and Brits liberated them twice from the Germans, taking ten times more casualties in World War Two than did the Résistance. While by comparison the French killed three times more Jews than they lost members of the Résistance.

  But that’s not how the myth-makers portray it.

  A country’s like a person: if you don’t feel good about yourself, maybe a lie or two will make you feel better?

  There I sat in a damp Paris wind, reading an interview about how wonderful it was that so many new mosques were opening in France and that there no longer would be pork in French school meals, that new immigrants should be encouraged to bring in as many family members as possible, and soon illegal immigrants could vote.

  And here was a photo of the interviewee, the guy Nisa had mentioned, Rachid Raqmi, looking suave in a thousand-dollar suit, the well-trimmed beard, the eyes beaming friendship and innocence. Followed by many nice words about his
work to unite all viewpoints into one inclusive, all-loving movement.

  Perhaps if I’d known less about the soft conquest side of Islam I’d have been more convinced. But the trouble with experience is that it makes you trust very little.

  And makes you annoyed that smart people can be so stupid.

  A guy in a Denver Broncos cap stopped in front of her building, checked the doorbells, and backed into the street to glance up at the third floor. He was tall and gangly and had dark sideburns and a lithe, muscular stance.

  He crossed the street, looked up at the third floor again, used his phone to take a picture and sent it somewhere. He walked slowly back and forth along the opposite sidewalk, stopped to stare in the window of a lingerie shop and punched the glass hard with his fist, startling the women inside. I got ready to move in on him when he got a call. He stood between two parked cars scanning Anne’s building, nodding and answering questions. I risked walking past him once and caught his Arabic-accented voice, “She is not doing this,” and then, “Two nights, in bed at the same time ... no, no, the lights go out at the same time ...”

  I lingered before the lingerie shop but it was too far so I only got an occasional word, “trouble,” “inside,” “night ...”

  It was extraordinary that they didn’t know Anne had moved, that they’d fallen for such an elemental trap ... And that they didn’t know she and I were together.

  The guy pocketed his phone, crossed the street to her building and pressed three doorbells. After a few seconds one buzzed and he entered.

  I called Thierry. “I’m outside Anne’s place. Guy just went in.”

  “You armed?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “If he’s gone in, he’s armed. You can’t chance it. I have three cars on the way.”

  “Uniforms?”

  “Hell no. I’m coming too, fast as I can ...”

  The front door popped open and an old woman came out tugging a shopping caddy. She tried to yank the door shut but I got in before her.

  “It’s not allowed!” she squawked as I took the stairs silently three at a time, listening for the patter of his running shoes above me on the tin treads, watching his shadow dance up the stairway walls in the thin yellow light, hearing the huff of his breath, the whistle as he stopped at Anne’s door.

  His phone buzzed. It took him a moment to dig it out. I eased up three stairs so I could see him through the bannisters above. The reason he’d had trouble digging out his phone was that in the other hand he was holding what appeared to be a 9mm handgun.

  “What?” he said in Arabic. Then, “You’re sure? You saw him?” Another moment of silence, then, “If so, he is already here.”

  He’d clearly been planning to break in on Anne and kill her. And now he’d got a call that I was here. Did they know it was me? Or just that someone had followed him? “If he is not in this stairway, below me,” the guy said softly, “then ...”

  I cursed myself for not having a gun, only the Marine Kabar I always keep sheathed on my right calf. But he had that 9mm or whatever that could blow a hole in me the size of a grapefruit or take my head half off before I could get near him. I had to stay back yet follow him till Anne and everybody got here.

  Surprisingly, he went up three more stories to the roof, the door hanging open when I got there. But if he was out there on that roof he’d shoot me before I got close.

  I backed down the stairway below the door, called Thierry again. “Where are you?”

  “Three streets away.”

  “He’s up on the roof and I’m half a flight down. He’s got a 9mm. Doesn’t know I don’t have a gun –”

  I leaned out the door, saw nothing. Leaned the other way. Nothing. I sprinted onto the roof, did a quick roll and came up with the knife in my right hand. Saw no one. At a clunk of wood behind me I spun toward it, slashing with my knife but it was only wind through the open door.

  Looking over the roof edge I saw a dark form descending toward a lower rooftop three stories below. Free-climbing down from window to window, using tiny ridges in the brick.

  Street punk, where’d he learn to climb like that?

  He was almost to the lower rooftop. I squeezed over the edge and hung there, toes scrabbling for a hold, my bullet-damaged shoulder slowly tugging apart.

  This was the stuff I hated. I’d developed a strong fear of climbing after falling off a number of nasty cliffs, the first when I was a kid, then the deadly peaks where SF sends you, then other cliffs elsewhere, unnamed Himalayan and Andes mountains, places etched by danger into my heart. Tied to a fraying rope off a Honolulu office tower, or inching up a raw frozen granite cliff with no handholds that somehow had to be climbed. Dreams every night of canyon walls and volcanic ridges I’ve nearly fallen from. Knowing that sooner or later my bad shoulder will betray me.

  My fingers started sliding from the edge. The guy had spit on it to make it slippery. I pulled up and slid sideways for a better grip.

  Took a breath. Made myself stop shivering. Told myself to ignore the shoulder pain.

  No way to die.

  The grooves between the bricks were a quarter inch deep, enough that with strong fingertips and a hard edge to your soles you can very carefully go down it. But one tiny slip of a fingertip or toe and you’re hurtling backwards and smashing down on the lower roof, to lie there trying to make sense with a smashed body and a jellied brain.

  Holding the inside of the ledge with my left hand I swung right and dug my fingers into a brick groove, then the side of my right foot in a groove below, then the other foot. Gripping the groove with my fingers as hard as I could, I slowly let go of the roof edge and eased my left hand to a groove and pinned my fingers in.

  All I had to do now was steadily move down this wall, one pressure point at a time, keep ignoring the shoulder as the humerus slid in and out of the socket.

  Holding extra tight to the finger grooves, I slid one foot down, trying not to breathe and knock myself off the wall, toe-scrabbled for a hold, found one, dug in. Then the other foot, but for a while there was no groove, the angle was wrong, and I hung there pinned against the wall.

  The edge of my foot found a crease. Slowly I eased down on it. It held. I took a breath, waited, took another. My right wrist was trembling, my knees weak, the shoulder in agony.

  One by one I moved each hand. This was dangerous because they were my only safety, and to release one was a great risk. But I had to move them down, one at a time, or stay pinned to the wall forever. I waited, gathered strength, and did it again.

  In maybe five minutes I was low enough to jump. The guy had disappeared from the rooftop. I ran toward the hut in the center that was the stairway exit and yanked the handle. It was locked. I turned to the edge; it was flat, graveled, with no wall at all, the eerie sense of stepping into space, down into the street with its tiny headlights in the streets below.

  I ran to the third side: straight down into nothingness.

  I shoved the humerus back into the socket, went back to the hut and yanked the door handle. Bolted solid.

  The guy had gone through an open door and locked it behind him.

  I called Thierry. “We’re in front,” he said.

  “He went out next door, to your left as you face the building.”

  “Nobody’s come out ...”

  I tried to slide my knife between the door and jamb to push back the bolt, but the gap was too narrow. Nor could the knife cut through the door’s galvanized steel cover.

  I went to the side, stripped away the tarpaper and with my knife dug the plaster out in chunks till I could smash through the interior lath, grabbed the door handle from the inside and shoved it open and sprinted down the darkened staircase.

  It opened out onto a paved courtyard with a door at one end and that led to a cobbled alley, empty and dark but for the silhouette of a cat
trotting across it.

  He was long gone.

  I had lost him but couldn’t see anywhere I’d failed. He was that clever, that sharp. That lucky.

  Evil personified.

  But to him, so was I.

  —

  WHO WANTED to kill the whole damn investigation? Otherwise why try to discredit Thierry, as much as he denied it?

  The answer was Who was most threatened by it?

  If the investigation threatened them, it was onto something.

  At 21:00 that night – 09:00 that morning in Honolulu – I was standing at the DGSE espresso machine when Mitchell called back.

  “Look, I only got a minute,” he said.

  “You’re the one called me –”

  “I shouldn’t even be taking the time ...”

  “Mitchell! Spit it out.”

  “I may have found the people who falsified Thierry’s accounts. It’s out of a server in Ukraine through another in Chechnya. But far as I can tell it comes from a physical address in France, someplace called Avon.”

  “Avon? That’s next to Fontainebleau, where Mustafa vanished, weeks ago. We just missed grabbing Gisèle there ...”

  “Could be just a pass-through – they’re maybe not even in it.”

  “How soon can you find out more?”

  A pause as he considered. “Give me a day.”

  —

  EARLY NEXT MORNING I planned to take the Métro to 69 Quai de Valmy, though I really didn’t want to go there. Where a guy named Bruno Rigard had been found dead. Probably because of me.

  In SF I’d studied the Battle of Valmy. After France’s 1789 revolution, the kings of Germany, England and Austria in September 1792 attacked the new French revolutionary army, intending to restore the French monarchy. And lost.

  A war, historians say, that saved the Revolution. And changed the course of history.

  I thought of the Tower, Paris. The world.

  How, today, do you change the course of history?