1:46:44. Tom handed Reuven the shopping bag. He pulled on the pair of thin, black Kevlar-lined leather duty gloves he’d bought out of a law enforcement catalog. “Go-see you later.”
In response, Reuven gave his colleague an upturned thumb.
“Very funny.”
“I’ll give you one tap on the radio when I’m clear of rue Nicolet. Only move then.”
“Understood. See you at the rendezvous.”
1:46:51A.M. The Israeli slung the long handles of the shopping bag over his right shoulder and strode boldly down the three steps, turned left, and marched up the street. He’d constructed his cleaning route so as to make things as difficult as possible for the opposition. It wouldn’t be hard, either. First of all, they appeared to be using single watchers. Bad tactics. When Reuven had set up the hit on Palestinian intelligence chief Atif B’sisou in Montparnasse, he’d used four three-man teams to seal the area. No matter how the Palestinians might have reacted, Reuven had been confident there’d be at least one Israeli team on them every second.
Reuven pulled the cap down on his head and headed straight for rue Bachelet. It was a rule of combat: when ambushed, counterambush. When attacked, counterattack. Do not shy away. Get in your adversary’s face-which is exactly what he was doing now. There were only two possibilities: the watcher would go passive, in which case he’d shift his position to keep Reuven from seeing him. If he did that, Reuven would lose him on the cleaning route. Or he’d go provocative and aggressive, in which case Reuven would deal with him using the suppressed Glock he’d carried in the small of his back, but which now rested in his right hand, concealed by the shopping bag’s big outer pocket.
In either case, Reuven would turn right onto rue Bachelet and follow the one-way street with the traffic flow, then veer west and scamper up the long stairway at the end of rue Becquerel. Any pursuers would immediately become obvious. Moreover, they’d have to really scramble to cut him off at the stairway’s top end on rue Lamarck.
Rue Lamarck was a scythe-shaped, one-way street. The long handle of which extended as far west as the avenue de St. Ouen. The scythe’s blade ran around the eastern base of the Sacré Coeur cathedral compound. And running off that section of rue Lamarck were a bunch of the tiny, narrow, no-more-than-alley-wide streets common to the Montmartre district. Reuven would use those passageways to lose any pursuers. He’d complete his cleaning route by circling clear around Sacré Coeur, then move east and south once more, waiting for Tom near the Château Rouge metro stop. It was a piece of cake. Maybe.
1:47:33. Careful to stay on the outer part of the narrow sidewalk, Reuven came abreast of the doorway where he’d spotted the watcher. He glanced left. The doorway was empty. The guy had obviously shifted position while he and Tom were doing their fast change. That was good news/bad news. Good news was that he’d gone passive. Bad news was he was out there somewhere, prowling and potentially dangerous. Either way, it was time for Tom to get moving. Reuven reached down with his left hand and tapped the transmit button on the radio once.
1:47:39. As Reuven made his way around half a dozen parked motorcycles at the end of rue Nicolet and turned onto rue Bachelet he realized the opposition had been doing some contingency planning, too. The two streetlights, which less than twenty-four hours earlier had given the street of antique houses the postcard look of Toulouse-Lautrec’s nineteenth-century Montmartre, were now both extinguished. The entire length of the 170-meter-long street was plunged into ominous, murky darkness. Things had gone from Le Lapin Agile toRififi.
1:47:42. Reuven’s mind and body both reacted to his surroundings, but his physical appearance never changed. Combat was mental. That’s what they taught you in theMat’kal. It required training, discipline, and confidence.
1:47:43. Reuven crossed the narrow street.Scan and breathe. Scan and breathe. That was what the firearms instructors drilled into you day after day on the range. Do not succumb to tunnel vision. Take in oxygen. Keep every instinct keened. Ears open. Nose open. Miss nothing. Become a sponge. Anticipate.
1:47:45. Reuven’s radar sensed movement behind him. Then his ears caught the faint but nonetheless distinct scrape of running shoes against asphalt, moving in quick, potentially violent fashion. The motion in itself was eloquent. It told the Israeli his opposition was armed with a knife or a garrote, not a gun. And then the smells hit him: garlic, tobacco, and sweat-even in the chill, there was sweat.
1:47:46. Reuven feinted right but moved left, rolling over the low hood of a car and dropping into a crouch as a body came hurtling past the spot where his left shoulder had been. He heard the whoosh of the blade as it slashed air.
He caught a glimpse of the man wielding it. Dressed inbanlieue hiphop and carrying a big folding knife with a curved blade.An amateur. Only amateurs use knives that big. Maybe. But maybe also a professional-a gangsta paid a hundred euros to make this look like a street robbery.
1:47:48. Reuven tucked the shopping bag tightly under his right arm. He brought the Glock up, parallel to the pavement.
1:47:49. His left hand racked the slide, loading a round into the pistol’s chamber. Simultaneously, Reuven swung the suppressor’s muzzle across his assailant’s sweatshirt-covered chest, almost as if he were swinging a paintbrush, and as the muzzle crossed center mass, he pulled the trigger twice in rapid succession-thwop-thwop.
The target went down. But instead of dying, he groaned loudly, cursed in guttural Arabic, rolled away from Reuven, and tried to pull himself to his feet. He’d never even let go of the big knife.
The son of a whore’s wearing a vest. Reuven shifted the Glock into a two-handed grip, stepped up, and using the car to steady himself, put a carefully aimed third round into the side of the hip-hop’s head.
1:47:52. The hip-hop dropped heavily, splayed out on the sidewalk facedown, thrashing like he’d been jolted with a Taser. He bucked half a dozen times then went still. A puddle of dark blood began to drain from the head wound.
1:47:57. Reuven backed away from the car, breathing through his mouth to make sure he took in a lot of oxygen. He pointed the muzzle of the Glock slightly downward-the stance they called low ready at the range-swinging the weapon left/right, right/left, his eyes searching the darkened street for anomalies. He thought he heard the faint sound of shoe leather on concrete moving away from him, but he couldn’t be absolutely sure.
1:48:03. Reuven looked up and scanned the windows. Thank God it was all quiet. There were no lights; no nosy neighbors. He dropped to his knees and crawled around until he’d retrieved his three 9mm shell casings from the street and shoved them in his pocket. Then he approached the dead hiphop and rolled the corpse with his toe, careful to stay away from the large puddle of blood leaking from the side of the man’s shattered temple. He’d been right: the hip-hop had the look of an Algerian or Moroccanbanlieue gangbanger-right down to the jailhouse tattoo on the back of his hand.
1:48:29. The Israeli patted the dead man down. There was a wallet, a pager, and a cell phone. Reuven stuffed them into the shopping bag. Gingerly, he pulled the hip-hop’s sweatshirt up. There were five hundred-euro bills secured in the Velcro straps of the bulletproof vest. He took them, too. The money was folded around a small piece of yellow paper-one of those silly Post-it sticky notes.
Reuven held the paper up and squinted in the darkness. On the Post-it was writtenRaynouard. The numerals were Arabic-17. The address was Tom’s.
The Israeli started up the street at a dead run, heading for the long flight of stairs. He knew there was an all-night taxi stand near the intersection of rue Lamarck and rue Caulaincourt.