Two blocks past rue Marceau, at Place Marie, he turned right again, veering onto avenue Parmentier, which ran more or less north-south from the edge of town to the railroad station. He pulled to the curb. Something was just not right. Tom reached for his cell phone. Then he shoved it back in his black leather jacket. Too easy to intercept calls. He’d handle this by himself.
He checked his six, then merged into the light traffic and steered the Beemer down avenue Parmentier. The street actually had some character. There were mature oaks and poplars lining the broad sidewalks. There were a couple of decent-looking restaurants, some nice cafés-and not a Starbucks or McDonald’s in sight, which is more than the Champs-Élysées could claim.
10:42. Tom drove until he came to rue General de Gaulle, turned right, drove half a block, found six feet of empty curb between cars, and pulled over. Motor idling, he reached into the right-hand saddlebag and withdrew a small pair of range-finding binoculars, which he trained down the street.
Two blocks ahead on the right-hand side stood Margolis’s apartment house-a four-story redbrick shoe box of a place. From the look of it, it had probably been built in the early seventies. If he stretched, Tom could just make out the van on rue Marceau. Now he refocused the binocs, panning them back and forth on rue General de Gaulle.
God damn. There were two surveillance teams on the street. Eight guys, evenly divided in a pair of black Citroën sedans with Paris-issued private plates parked on opposite sides of the street. The cars were facing each other so the men could chase down either end of rue General de Gaulle.
There was a second van, too. It was gray, and despite the Paris address on its side, the van had a license plate ending in 23, which meant it had been issued in Creuse. Van Two sat at the near intersection on…Tom checked his map…rue Roosevelt. It was a trap. And frigging Adam Margolis was the bait.
Tom ran his field glasses over the setup. How obvious could you get? They’d prepositioned for a by-the-numbers traffic stop. The vans would seal the street off, the sedans would block the car, and the bad guy would be toast. At least that’s the way it looked on paper. In real life, however, it was the eight dumbshits in the two Citroëns who’d be toast. Because they’d made a very basic error in their operational planning.
From the way the trap was set, it was obvious to Tom they’d assumed he’d be driving a car. Why? Because Henry J. NOTKINS and his boss, Harry Z. INCHBALD, were idiots.
In fact, Tom could make out INCHBALD in the front seat of the Citroën facing him. It was Liam McWhirter, all right, even though he was wearing a Harpo Marx wig, fake eyeglasses, and a light disguise prosthetic: still the same red-faced, porcine drunk. Tom adjusted the binoculars. Jeezus, McWhirter was even wearing his trademark wrinkled blue button-down Brooks Brothers shirt under the tan Nautica golf jacket.
Tom panned the other seven, but found no familiar faces. He went back to McWhirter, who was holding his radio upside down, speaking into the mike out of the side of his mouth. Nothing like being obvious. What the hell were these guys trying to do?
Tom had told Margolis he’d be driving. He hadn’t saidwhat he’d be driving. But Margolis assumed it would be a car-and that, no doubt, is what he’d told Harry Z.
Too bad. Tom shut the engine off, raised his visor, and adjusted the prosthetic. Then he pulled a detailed road map ofParis et environs out of his saddlebag. He sat sideways on the BMW’s saddle, arms crossed, studying the map, and worked out two alternate evasion and escape plans, just in case he’d need them.
10:55. Adam Margolis, CIA bait boy, appeared on the front steps of the apartment house. He was carrying a legal-size brown envelope. Tom adjusted the focus on his binoculars and looked into the windshield of the Citroën facing him. Harry Z. INCHBALD pointed at Margolis, smacked the driver’s arm, and spoke into the radio. The driver reached down and forward with his right hand. Turning the ignition key, no doubt. Tom watched the big sedan vibrate slightly as the driver gunned the engine. He focused on the other Citroën, and the two vans. All the drivers were revving engines. They were good to go.
So was Tom. But he didn’t go anywhere near Henry J. NOTKINS or Harry Z. INCHBALD. That move would have been pure Hollywood bull puckey. Sure, if Tom were being played by Brad Pitt in a Jerry Bruckheimer movie directed by Michael Ritchie, he’d gun the bike, roar down the street, veering at the last minute onto the sidewalk, where he’d knock a couple of fruit stands into next week, slalom past terrified knots of pedestrians, snatch the envelope out of Margolis’s hand, and thread the needle at the end of the blocked-off street (missing the blocking van by microns). Then, after using a parked car as a ski jump for the motorcycle, he’d skedaddle. The two Citroëns and two vans would careen after him, and there’d be a wild, six-minutewham-bam-slam jump-cut chase against on-coming traffic that would end with all the bad guys’ vehicles wrecked, Tom in the clear, and moviegoers on the edge of their seats.
So much for fantasy. Tom, who had once rear-ended his Agency vehicle and spent thirteen hours on the damn postaction paperwork justifying the expense, backed the bike around the corner, shut the motor off, then wrestled the Beemer onto its stand. Then he went back and surreptitiously observed McWhirter’s wannabe trap for another half minute. He made brief mental notes.
Then he pulled one of the two untraceable 4627 prepaid cell phones he was carrying out of his leather jacket, dialed 17, which is the two-digit toll-free number for the Paris region Gendarmerie Nationale, and, using a Marseillaise accent, told the police operator there was a kidnapping of an American diplomat in progress on rue General de Gaulle in Cormeilles-en-Parisis and that four vehicles were involved. Tom recited the license-plate numbers, described the positions of the Citroëns and the vans on the street, and hung up. Quickly, he pulled the battery out of the cell phone and stomped it with his boot heel. Without a battery, the phone’s position could not be tracked-even by DST.
He strolled back to the BMW, straddled the bike, rolled it off the stand, and turned the ignition key.
11:03. From six blocks away, Tom heard the approaching hee-haw of police cars before the four cars of Americans did. When he saw the two black SWAT vans heading toward rue General de Gaulle, he knew the gendarmes weren’t taking any chances. Before Harry Z. INCHBALD’s team knew what was happening, they’d be swarmed by submachine-gun-toting cops in black fatigues, pulled out of the vehicles, and proned on the ground.
11:04. Tom raised the visor of his helmet, removed the prosthetic, peeled all the remaining cement off his skin, and dropped everything into a plastic baggie, which got stored in one of the saddlebags. Then he backed up the bike, turned it around, and rode to avenue Parmentier. There, he found a café, parked, pulled off his helmet, secured it to the saddle, went to the bar, and ordered a doublecafé crème and apain au chocolat.
11:58A.M. Tom paid for the food, returned to the bike, and drove at a leisurely pace back to rue General de Gaulle. He circled the area so he could observe the street from both ends. There was no sign of the Americans-or the police. He drove a couple of blocks farther east, then pulled to the curb and dialed the cell-phone number Adam Margolis had given him.