The Ninth Orphan (15 page)

Translated, the phrase meant
Changing-Face Dragon
.

Cho-Wu had dealt with operatives who were masters of disguise before, but he’d never seen one this good. He leaned closer to the screen to study the frozen image of the American’s face. Even though Nine had been trying to look casual, his face reflected a sense of heightened excitement, even fear, within – emotions an operative always felt during an assignment, as Cho-Wu knew only too well. “Bian se long,” Cho-Wu repeated.

He instructed the café owner to continue with the footage. Images appeared of Nine busy typing before leaving. “Which computer did he use?” Cho-Wu asked.

The owner pointed to one of several computers out in the main room. Cho-Wu went to it and set about recovering its recent history. It took a few minutes, but eventually he sourced an image of Isabelle standing alongside her father. It was one of several images Nine had downloaded while surfing for information on Monsieur Alleget.

Cho-Wu studied the beautiful ebony woman’s face then switched off the computer. He turned to the owner and ordered him into the back room again. There, away from prying eyes, the agent quickly reached out and touched the back of the man’s neck. Putting his knowledge of traditional Chinese medicine to good use, he exerted subtle pressure on a precise acupuncture point. This immediately put the café owner to sleep. Cho-Wu lowered him to the floor before leaving.

As he walked away from the café, the agent mentally reviewed what he’d seen.
Unsurprisingly
, the American had left him little to go on with. All Cho-Wu had found was footage of a Slavic disguise that the American would have undoubtedly discarded by now. He was right about that. Nine and his fellow Omegans never used the same disguise twice.

Almost as an afterthought, Cho-Wu remembered the images the operative had downloaded of the retired politician and his daughter. He wondered what their connection to the American could be.

#

On the other side of Paris, in the same hotel they’d crashed in after their earlier ordeal, Nine looked at Isabelle as she awoke from an exhausted sleep. The Frenchwoman blinked several times as if trying to remember where she was. When she saw Nine’s face, she felt like she was waking from one nightmare and entering another.

Nine had already showered and looked like he was ready to go. He glanced at his watch. It was 9.35 a.m. “Check-out time is ten o’clock. I want us out the door by then.”

Isabelle remained in bed and shook her head disobediently. “I do not belong to you, idiot.” Addressing him in English, she tried her best to sound confident. “I am not your woman! You are sick!” Growing in confidence, she reverted to French. “You’re not even worthy enough to be in my presence. We are polar opposites. Your heart is the South Pole, my heart is the North Pole.”

Nine looked at her impatiently. Isabelle studied his face as if attempting to intuitively understand his anguished soul. “You’re desperately trying to remain alive,” she continued in French, “but inside you’re already dead. You heart is frozen. To me, you are a dead man!”

Having heard enough, Nine yanked her out of bed in one swift movement. He frog-marched her into the bathroom where he pulled all her clothes off then pushed her naked into the shower cubicle before turning the cold tap on. Isabelle shrieked as the cold water hit her. She tried to jump out of the cubicle, but Nine barred her way. Thankfully, he turned the hot water tap on, so the water’s temperature soon became bearable.

Isabelle felt humiliated. She’d never been treated so callously by anybody. As Nine walked out of the bathroom, Isabelle began to sob. Her tears mingled with the warm water as she stood under the shower. She felt so bereft she didn’t even bother to wash herself.

Outside the bathroom, Nine pulled the black kit off his chest and began to apply a new disguise. The fugitive agent removed a tiny eye-liner and a lipstick from the kit, applying a dark eye-liner and painting his lips black. He looked up as a fully-dressed but still tearful Isabelle emerged from the bathroom. “Sit down,” he ordered her. “The media will have your picture everywhere by now. You need a disguise.”

Although Nine could sense Isabelle’s wretched inner-state, he deliberately ignored her. He couldn’t allow himself to soften. With operatives like Kentbridge and Seventeen – both expert assassins – closing in on him, this was not the time to be compassionate.

22

L
ater that morning, sitting in the back seat of a taxi, Nine kept one eye on Isabelle and one on the view outside as they were driven through the city center. Shoppers and workers rubbed shoulders in the busy streets outside. Nine checked his watch: 10.20.

The couple had undergone a transformation since they were in the hotel. He was now disguised as a punk, complete with fake tattoos, body piercings and spiky green hair, while she was disguised as a Goth with hardcore make-up that included dark eye-liner and black lipstick. They were completely unrecognizable.

The operative held his pistol under a newspaper on his knee. Although Isabelle could see the weapon was pointed at her, she felt less fearful than before. Since Nine had humiliated her back at the hotel, she had dug deep and found some inner strength. Her survival instincts were kicking in and she could sense freedom would be hers if she played her cards right. “Where are you taking me?” she whispered in French. Nine stared straight ahead and ignored her. “Say something,” she said a little louder.

“
Another hotel,” he whispered. “Now keep quiet.” Nine moved the newspaper so Isabelle could see the pistol more clearly. She pretended she hadn’t seen it.

“
Why?” she asked. “What was wrong with the last one?” Nine said nothing more.

The taxi stopped in heavy traffic outside a shopping mall. Nine saw a hotel up ahead. He still didn’t know what he was going to do with Isabelle, but knew they needed to relocate to stay one step ahead of Kentbridge. Nine leaned forward, tapped the driver on the shoulder and pointed at the hotel. “Drop us there,” he said in French.

While Nine was distracted, Isabelle flung open the passenger door and jumped out of the taxi before it stopped. She fell down onto all fours, grazing her hands and knees on the asphalt, but quickly regained her feet and sprinted toward the nearby mall. Cursing, Nine paid the taxi driver, then raced after his rebellious hostage. Behind him, the driver smiled to himself, thinking he’d just witnessed a lovers’ quarrel.

Inside the mall, a security guard paused in his rounds to watch a newsflash on a wide-screen television set on display outside a retail store. A full-screen image of Isabelle appeared onscreen. A newsreader told viewers Paris Police had confirmed Isabelle Alleget, the daughter of former Minister of the Arts, Fabrice Alleget, had been taken hostage. The newsreader said police had no comment on the identity of her abductor as yet.

Isabelle entered the mall. She spotted the security guard and ran up to him, breathless. “Help me! I'm Isabelle Alleget! I've been kidnapped!”

Convinced she was a prankster, the guard looked at the wild-eyed Goth before him and chuckled. “Yeah, sure, and I'm Napoléon Bonaparte!”

The guard's demeanor changed when Nine suddenly ran up and grabbed Isabelle. As the guard reached for his pistol, Nine kicked him. The impact sent the guard flying backwards through the store's plate glass window, shattering it. Frightened customers and shop assistants fled screaming. More security guards arrived, attracted by the commotion.

Dragging Isabelle with him, Nine raced up an escalator to the first floor as emergency alarms shrieked throughout the mall. He led Isabelle up a succession of escalators to the fourth floor. There, he leaned over a rail and saw the security guards conferring with several gendarmes on the ground floor. An alert officer saw Nine and pointed up at him. He and the others ran up the escalator toward their quarry.

Nine's trained eyes scanned the mall's interior. He had a sudden flash of intuition and began dragging a still-struggling Isabelle up another escalator toward the next floor. Half way up, he saw a gendarme waiting for them at the top with pistol drawn. The gendarme hit an emergency button which stopped the escalator. Nine immediately drew his pistol and pointed it at Isabelle's head. He held her tight so the gendarme couldn't line up a clean shot at him. “Drop your weapon!” Nine ordered the gendarme in French.

The gendarme hesitated. Nine fired a warning shot just above the gendarme's head. Isabelle screamed. The gendarme reluctantly placed his pistol on an escalator step. Nine motioned to him to back up then pulled Isabelle up the escalator. As they neared the top, he kicked the discarded pistol away and knocked the gendarme unconscious.

Nine surveyed the other gendarmes and security guards who were now racing up the escalator from the floor below. He spotted an elevator and pulled Isabelle toward it. Nine pressed the elevator button while supporting his captive who appeared close to collapse after the dramas of the past few minutes. He pushed the button again.

The elevator doors opened just as the gendarmes arrived, weapons drawn. Nine threw Isabelle inside the elevator and hit the
Close
button. His pursuers ran toward the elevator as its doors started to shut. Isabelle screamed again as Nine dived on top of her to shield her in case there was any shooting directed their way. The doors closed just in time.

As the elevator descended, Nine studied the ceiling panels. He hit the
Stop
button and the elevator paused between floors. Trembling, Isabelle looked up at him warily. Nine lifted her to her feet. She shook her head adamantly when she realized he planned to escape by climbing out of the ceiling of the elevator. “I am not coming,” she said stubbornly. “Why don’t you just kill me?”

Nine grabbed her and pulled her face close to his. “You're coming.”

Sixty seconds later, on the ground floor, half a dozen gendarmes waited, guns drawn, as the elevator doors opened. Surprised to find the elevator empty, they raced off in different directions, shouting and brandishing their weapons.

On a stairway leading to the Metro underground station beneath the mall, Nine pulled Isabelle down the steps two at a time. Only his steadying hand prevented her from falling. At the bottom stairwell, they literally crashed into a young, smartly-dressed, business couple who had just left the station. The woman took one look at the pistol pointed at her and opened her mouth to scream.

“
Scream and you die, madam,” Nine assured her in French.

The woman remained silent. Something about Nine told her he wasn’t kidding.

“
What do you want?” the young man asked nervously.

“
Your clothes.” Nine waved the pistol impatiently. “Hurry.” Ashen-faced, the couple didn’t wait to be asked twice. They began removing their clothes, all the while looking at the pistol pointed at them. Nine turned to Isabelle. “You strip too,” he ordered. “And wipe that make-up off.” He handed her a moist tissue from a tiny packet of tissues he carried in the make-up kit strapped to his chest. At the same time, he started undressing.

Aware of what Nine was capable of, Isabelle resignedly did as she was told. In less than a minute, she’d removed her makeup, and she and Nine had changed into the couple’s clothes. An ill-fitting but nevertheless smart suit now covered Nine’s fake tattoos and body-piercings, and he wore a pair of spectacles. He ruffled his spiky green hair. This eliminated the spikes, but not the color. It was the best he could do for now.

Meanwhile, Isabelle looked elegant in the young woman’s business suit. The last vestiges of her Gothic make-up were still visible, but Nine figured no security cameras would pick that up. Knowing every second counted, he opened the door leading into the underground station and pulled Isabelle through it. He slammed the door shut after him, leaving the near-naked couple bemused and shaken in the stairwell.

Nine pulled Isabelle along the station platform where commuters competed for space. The pair melted into the crowd just as gendarmes charged into the station.

Aware his green hair stood out like dog’s balls, Nine scanned the heads of the commuters around him. He spotted a stylish cap on the head of a middle-aged commuter who was being pushed along toward him in the crowd. As the man was swept past, Nine reached out and snatched the cap from its owner’s head.

“
Vous bâtard! Rendez-le!” the man shouted angrily. He tried to turn back to retrieve his cap, but the thief was already out of sight.

Beneath the cap that now covered his green hair, Nine glanced back at the gendarmes. They were busy searching the faces of people in the crowd. Theirs was a hopeless task compounded when hundreds of passengers disembarked from another train.

Relieved he’d thrown his pursuers off the scent, for the moment at least, Nine turned his attention back to Isabelle whose hand he still grasped tightly. She scowled at him with a look of utter disgust. Ignoring her obvious contempt for him, he pulled her toward the nearest exit. He knew it would only be a matter of minutes before the gendarmes cordoned off all exits.

#

Isabelle’s father was busy elsewhere in Paris trying to find her. Monsieur Alleget had already been in touch with every influential contact he’d gained during his long career.

Since returning to the capital earlier that day, the retired politician had met with key figures in the Ministère de l'Intérieur, or French Interior Ministry, as well as certain military officials. He’d even met with one of the commanders of the French Foreign Legion and with medium-level officials within DST, the French intelligence department that was also co-operating with Kentbridge and Seventeen.