The Coil (22 page)

Simon closed the door and hurried to him.
“Est-ce-que je vous ai sait mal?”
Are you all right?

The youth crawled out, shaking his head, dazed.
“Imbécile!”
He wore a bike helmet, and his blond hair straggled out from under it, stringy with sweat. He glared indignantly, continuing in French. “This is all your fault! You should look around sometimes. You're not the only person on the street!” His shirt was ripped by the cobblestones. Drops of blood beaded on fresh scrapes.

“Sorry.” Simon tried to help him up. “But you were riding on the sidewalk.”

The young man shook Simon off, stumbled to his feet, and lurched toward his bike. With each step, he regained his balance and his indignation increased.

He yanked the bike up onto its wheels. “Look at that paint!”

Simon studied the scratches, which were minor. The bike was a simple five-speed Schwinn, but the fellow was either inordinately fond of it or was trying to shake him down. People were gathering, and Simon could risk no more delay. He must put distance between himself and the stolen car before anyone, especially the police, came looking. Besides, he had to get back to Paris to get his film developed.

He took out his wallet and made his voice conciliatory. “Look, I know this is beyond mere money. You have a fine bike there. Let me give you enough to make sure you can get it repaired and maybe a complete new paint job as well.”

“Not so fast…” The outrage in the youth's voice faded as he watched Simon count out euros.

At 150, Simon stopped. He gauged the fellow's eyes, which were focused on the currency. There was greed in those eyes, which was usually enough to clinch any deal.

Simon withdrew the cash. “I shouldn't offer you money,” he said smoothly. “I've insulted you.” He started to put it back in his wallet.

“
Non, non.
Perhaps it was partly my fault. I shouldn't have been on the sidewalk….” The bicyclist grabbed the euros.

Simon smiled. “That's very generous of you.”

The bicyclist tucked the money into a pocket and pushed off. As the little crowd broke up, muttering and shaking their heads, Simon climbed into the Peugeot and drove away. Soon he was on the highway, rushing back to Paris, to the answers he felt certain awaited.

 

The bicyclist, whose name was Étienne, pedaled off into the street, then doubled back to the alley where the man in the tailored business suit waited beside his expensive black Citroën. The motor was idling, exhaust fumes making the old passageway stink.

Etienne hopped off his bike. “You saw?” he asked with his usual bravado. He imagined himself a fine actor. He had played in two small theaters outside Paris. Someday he would be bigger than Jean-Paul Belmondo or Gérard Depardieu or even Tom Cruise. Today's job would be the most money he had earned for his talent—yet. He was also a petty thief and gangster, but that part would soon be past.

“I saw,” Gino Malko confirmed, wondering who the Peugeot's driver was.

Malko had run into the man first—literally—in Zurich with Terrill Leaming. Little more than an hour ago, he spotted him again on a balcony at the baron's château and then saw him take the Renault from the employees' lot. All of this was too much coincidence for Gino Malko, but he had not been able to deal with the man there. Malko had the underbutler to eliminate, and then he must get his boss off the estate quickly, which required an enormous bribe. So as they left, following the stolen Renault toward the village, he'd made a cell call, which led to employing the bicyclist. After that, he had sped his Citroën past the Renault, so he could be in the village to point out the target.

Malko walked past Étienne to the mouth of the alley and looked out carefully at the busy street and the scattered pedestrians on the sidewalk.

Étienne asked curiously, “Why did you want me to put a magnet under his car? It won't explode, will it?”

Malko did not answer. Satisfied no one had followed the youth, he spun on his heel, walked straight to him, and with violent force slammed the heel of his palm up under the chin of the unsuspecting teenager.

The head snapped. The spine cracked. The boy crashed back into his bicycle. Before either hit the cobblestones, Malko's stiletto was in his hand. It was the same one he had used less than an hour before to kill the underbutler, who had been the only one the baron allowed to serve—and witness—the lunch with Malko's boss.

Malko traced the tip of the stiletto down the Lycra shirt of the unconscious youth until he found just the right spot beneath his rib cage. Then with smooth, practiced force, he thrust the blade straight up and into the heart. There was little blood until he withdrew the stiletto, when it gushed. But Malko's hand was already gone. Not a drop touched him.

He cleaned the knife on the boy's shirt, returned it to the sheath on his forearm, and dragged the light corpse and then the bicycle over to the side. He took the euros the stranger had paid the boy. The crowd would remember the transaction, and the murder would be blamed on robbery.

He took one final look around. Satisfied, he climbed into the idling Citroën. The car glided onward to the alley's opposite end, its darkened windows black voids in the sunlight. No one could see his boss. No one could see him.

Paris, France

Liz stood in the center of her hotel room, gripping the cell Mac had given her. Her chest was tight with fury, but her mind had a new, diamondlike clarity. She checked her watch. She must move quickly. The woman had given her an hour, and there were only forty minutes left. She replayed everything she had learned.

Her whole life from the day she had left the “second debriefing” had been so believable that it had seemed only the CIA could have created it. As her troubled gaze settled on the closet door, she felt angry about how easily she had fallen for Mac's act—except for his slip about when the decision was made to postpone her series.

The truth was, her producer had no reason to lie. The network must have settled it the night before, just as Shay said. But to make his movie more plausible, Mac lied, giving Langley credit.
We want nothing to compromise our search for Sarah
. His bosses were afraid she would turn up the files somewhere beyond their control. It was a tiny chink in the illusion. A larger chink was their mole, or a traitor—someone within their group was feeding information to the blackmailer.

Illusion
. She stared down at the cell in her hand. The illusion, the movie, the facade depended on their ability to control her world. Would they then have relied solely on Mac to shadow her here? Not likely. She flipped the phone over, popped open the battery compartment, and inhaled sharply.

She had guessed it, but still she was shocked—two tiny bugs, the size of shirt buttons. One was a GPS tracking device, the other a microphone.

She stared. The enormity of what their presence meant appalled her. The kidnappers had followed her every move, and they had heard all of her conversations—with Mac, with the hotel desk clerks, with Tish and Simon and Jimmy Unak and the Waterloo ticket agent and the taxi drivers and…

They knew everything she had said.
Everything.
What everyone had told her. If it was auditory, someone had heard it or recorded it or both. The slightest cough, a clearing of the throat, the scraping of a chair, Simon's light snore, a toilet's flush…. It took her breath away, and she felt violated.

Yet why was she surprised? After years of studying her, they had known she would search for the files to save Sarah's life. So they arranged not only the kidnapping but the tracker and the listening device to leave nothing to chance. That explained Tish's murder: Liz had given Tish's address to her London taxi driver. Whoever was monitoring the listening bug heard it and passed it on to the mole directly or to a group that included the mole.

She paused, considering. After that, information must have dried up. Otherwise, the janitor would have simply followed her to the lockup. And if he missed her there, he would have found her at Jimmy Unak's nightclub.

She paced across the room, thinking what the lack of further pursuit meant. And then she knew: The kidnappers must have figured out they had a mole. The mole was dead or sidelined, or they had cut off information to him.

She turned and paced back. Her most immediate concern was whether what the kidnappers knew could harm anyone….

There was nothing more they could do to poor Tish Childs, and Jimmy Unak was irrelevant now. But there was still Simon. The bug's monitor knew Simon was planning to visit Baron de Darmond, and that the baron was connected to the Carnivore and the files. That could be very bad for Simon.

She rushed into the bathroom, turned on the shower, and left the cell on the sink. In the bedroom, she used the regular hotel phone to call.

“Answer, Simon. Answer!” But he did not. As soon as a beep sounded, she spoke urgently, “Simon, this is Sarah. Be careful. The people who hired that janitor in London may know you planned to go to the baron's today. I don't have to tell you they're dangerous. I wish I knew more, but I don't. I'll be in touch when I can.”

She severed the connection, stalked into the bathroom, and snatched up the cell. Enraged, she started to hurl it against the wall, then stopped. And smiled. It was a cold, thin smile. She crossed to the window and peered around the edge. The female janitor was still on the bench, her handbag neatly on her lap, convincingly ordinary, waiting for Liz to show up or for the hour to expire.

The woman was the key: She worked for the blackmailer.

As a plan formed in her mind, Liz opened the closet. She gazed down at Mac and said a silent, angry good-bye. She grabbed a black zippered jacket from a hanger. Once Mac's corpse was discovered, there would be no way she could return.

She found her own purse, removed all of the cash and credit cards, and then grabbed Asher's beret and Sarah's glasses. Where had she put Sarah's shoulder bag? It was sitting on the bureau—next to the Sig Sauer. As she tucked everything into it, her gaze kept returning to the gun, a 9-mm pistol in pristine condition. She remembered the heft of it in her hand. From where it lay, it seemed to call like a long-forgotten love.

Tormented, she did not touch it. She closed her eyes, recalling a study about soldiers in battle. The firing rate among American troops in World War II was only 15 percent. Most had been too scared to pull the trigger, because humans have an automatic safety catch to not kill their own kind.

For the army, the desire
not
to kill people was a problem. So their psychologists—people like herself—created a training program, which was really just behavioral conditioning, to produce warriors who could shoot and kill without thinking too much about it. By Vietnam, the firing rate rose an astounding six times to 90 percent.

She remembered Vienna. It was 1991, twilight, an area of small shops and quaint street lamps. Although a retiring man, faintly afraid of everything, the watchmaker she was on her way to meet was a valuable CIA asset. Andreas Bittermann's shop was known for fixing the poorly made time-pieces that came out of the Soviet Union. Of course, Communist officials stationed in Vienna promptly bought Western watches and clocks, but since they would have to return home eventually, where an ambitious apparatchik's career—not to mention his life—could be endangered by too much Westernization, they also sent their Eastern time-pieces to Andreas to be refurbished.

Secretly fluent in Russian, Andreas listened to the gossip among the wives, girlfriends, and children and passed on to his handler the promotions and demotions, comings and goings, and ambitions and weaknesses of Soviet authorities. With that, Langley uncovered gems of intelligence. Liz had met him twice and had been charmed by his French-accented German and his old-fashioned muttonchops.

By 1991, the Berlin Wall had crumbled, and Soviet states were spinning off into independence. Still, the Politburo remained nominally in charge. It was desperate to hold on to its few remaining reins of power and was often grandstanding—showing strength by eliminating “problems.” Andreas was frightened; he sent word his anti-Communist activities had come to the Politburo's attention.

As she approached his shop, she slipped her hand inside the roomy pocket of her raincoat, where her Walther was hidden, just in case. The sound suppressor was not screwed on, since that would make the weapon too long for her pocket. She was wearing a scarf over her hair and low-heeled pumps, just another hausfrau out running last-minute errands before dinner.

But when she reached the glass door, her hand on the knob, she saw Andreas was already dead, and it was a wet job. Her throat tight, she felt an odd tremor in her chest—half fear, half excitement. His body was sprawled forward over the counter like a broken bird. The back of his neck was shattered from a bloody exit wound.

As she stared, his assassin backed toward her, shoving his pistol with its attached sound suppressor inside one of those dingy overcoats all Communist janitors seemed to wear in those days.

Looking at the mirror across from him, the killer saw her reflection. She saw him see her. They locked gazes. Of course, by then she had her gun in her hand.

He whipped his weapon back out and spun, his first bullet fracturing the glass door and whining over her left shoulder. She had just enough time to duck. The glass shards cut into her raincoat but missed her face.

She looked up. His finger was squeezing a second time, his muzzle steady on her, confident because she appeared ineffectual.

She fired. Her bullet slammed into his chest. The noise of her unsilenced shot was volcanic in the quiet, shop-lined lane. His certainty had cost him: His muffled bullet went wild. Pedestrians screamed and ran for cover. He tottered back, hit the big mirror, and slid down the wall, an expression of astonishment on his dying face.

She returned her pistol to her coat pocket and hurried off, full of confusion. It was her first killing. As soon as she saw Andreas was dead, she could have run. That way, his murderer would never have seen her, and she could have reported the incident to her station chief and asked for instructions. But she had stayed. Was it because she felt responsible for Andreas, a kind, brave man?

He was dead, and his assassin was dead. For those who kept score, it would seem a fair outcome. For her, that was not the question. The problem was, she had enjoyed the contest, had liked that the killer had underestimated her, had been amazed that she had throbbed with the thrill. She already knew she liked to win, but this was different. She had an odd feeling that something inside her had just taken on new life.

Of course, in the nature of assignments and the brutishness of those times, she had killed again. Only later, when she learned the true nature of her parents' work, had she begun to wonder how much she was like them.

For a long time, she had looked for a reason for what she had done. Somehow patriotism was no explanation, because, as with the watchmaker's death, she could have turned the crime over to higher-ups. Killing for fun did not work either, because it had not been “fun,” more like a blind drive to get on with it, correct, accomplish.

Later, she would feel waves of queasiness. She had not understood herself, not really recognized herself, but perhaps that was because she had been like the soldiers in Vietnam—psychologically primed to squeeze the trigger without much thought about right or wrong or the humanity of the person who was going to take the bullet.

Maybe that was her parents' legacy. Maybe it was society's. Maybe it was Langley's. It had left her reeling with guilt.

Now violence was spreading everywhere. Juvenile crime was soaring in Britain and across the Continent—France, Germany, Russia, even staid Sweden, where the average age of male criminals had dropped from twenty to fifteen. In the United States, so-called school murders were almost commonplace. Guerrilla wars killed people around the planet, while terrorists were alternately called patriots or murderers, depending on one's politics. There was 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq. Her academic mind was packed with those sorts of statistics, anecdotes, observations, and theories.

In the hotel room, she took a long, slow breath and gazed at the Sig Sauer lying so invitingly on the chest of drawers. If humanity did not adhere to certain basic moral principles, there would be chaos. A world without ethical norms was not a place worth living in. Peace was born in the mind. Nothing could be achieved without the upliftment of the individual, and a violent mind was not a place where peace could prosper.

For her, these thoughts were almost a religion. She returned the gun to its hiding place, put the cell in her shoulder bag, and hurried out of the room resolutely unarmed. She must find a way to slip out and return to the hotel so she could observe the woman. She checked her watch. Only twenty minutes left, and she had no disguise.

In the elevator, she punched the button to the basement. When the doors opened, she stepped into a shadowy parking garage touched with the briny scent of the sea. Against the far wall, a small refrigerated truck was parked by the service elevator, the deliveryman unloading fresh fish into an ice cooler. He closed the truck's door and carried the cooler into the elevator, probably heading up to the hotel kitchen.

She remembered something her father once told her:
Use what you have. Fools throw up their hands. Geniuses steal.
As the elevator closed, she studied the truck. An idea struck her. Had the man bothered to lock it? After all, this was a guarded garage, and he probably expected to be right back. She looked around. No one was in sight. She strode to it, opened the side panel, and peered into the chilly interior.

Crates of fish were stacked one upon another. Smiling grimly, she jammed the cell down into a bin, the fish clammy and sandpaper-rough on her skin.
Let the bastards track her now.
She grabbed a rag from a hook, cleaned up, and closed the door. By the time the fish man returned, she was leaning against the hood, holding her ankle.

“Oh, pardon!”
She hobbled off, hoping she could talk him into what she needed.

He was small and round, his white apron stained red, his cheery face weathered brown. He said in French, “Are you all right, mademoiselle? Are you injured?”

“It's nothing. Well, maybe it's something. My boyfriend, you see. We had a fight…and…and…” She shrugged helplessly and gestured. “He left me here. When I ran after him, I twisted my ankle. I'm sure it'll be fine in a few minutes. I was just resting against your truck. Please don't concern yourself.”

He nodded, understanding. “Ah, yes. Love. One never knows when the breeze will turn. Even now at my age…well, you don't need to know about that. Too bad there is nothing I can do.” He shrugged. “Love!”

“Well, there
is
something, if it would not be too much trouble. My uncle has a shoe store nearby. Would you mind driving me? An important man like you has precious little time, I know, but perhaps it would not be too much trouble?” She hobbled again, caught her balance, smiled prettily up.

“Well, you say it is close? Of course, it is a small thing. I would be happy to.”