“You can have either one you like,” he said.
“Which one will you use?” she asked, confused.
“The one you don’t,” Mike replied. “Look, I know I messed up in Bosnia. I’m sorry. I’m not carting you along to use you again. Maybe we’ll have time to get together. If we do, I’ll try to show you the more pleasant side of me. But for right now, I have to get moving. Stay in the room. Order room service if you want food. Don’t go out. You can run away if you’d like, but I don’t suggest it. And don’t call anyone. Just… watch TV or something. Okay? If we get a chance I’ll take you shopping. But I don’t think we’ll get a chance.”
Mike put his dirty clothes in the bag provided, called down and asked the management to try to get them cleaned by tomorrow, and walked out.
“Where to?” the driver said, leaning his seat upright as Mike walked to the car.
“You know this stadium the colonel was talking about?” Mike asked.
“Yes, sir,” the driver said, putting the car in gear. “There?”
“There first,” Mike replied, looking at the map. The stadium was circled in red. He first checked the legend, then made some circles with his fingers. Unless he was much mistaken, a blast there would take out the stadium and some of the burgeoning suburbs around it. But that was about it. However, a blast near Notre Dame would completely gut Paris. And the bomb was a big one, one of the nasty “city busters” from the 1960s before the era of Multiple Independent Reentry Vehicles.
“You’re American,” Mike said, putting the map away and leaning back.
“Yes, sir,” the driver said. “I’m one of the diplomatic protection drivers. They figured you might have to have secure conversations.”
“You know what we’re looking for?” Mike asked. “And what is your name, O genie? I’d hate to have to call you James.”
“Bruce Gelinas,” the driver said with a chuckle. “And, yeah, I know what you’re looking for. The colonel briefed me on the way to pick you up. You really think it’s coming here?”
“This is the target I’d pick if I was a terrorist,” Mike replied, frowning. “The French are big into appeasement of the rifs. But you’d think they’d have learned from 1939 how well that works. Yeah, it might be headed anywhere in Europe; the American option is pretty much out the way they rigged it. But the pope is the right target in the right place at the right time. They don’t have nearly as much of a hard-on for the Germans as they do the French. And waiting for Berlin just gives us more time to find it. So, yeah, I think it’s going here.”
“Great,” the driver said. “And I suppose I have to be there while you look for it.”
“Well,” Mike pointed out, “if it goes off at Notre Dame, it’s going to get the embassy, too. So sitting on your butt there won’t get you anything. You don’t have any family in town, do you?”
“Nope,” Bruce said. “I’m single and fancy free, now that my last wife filed the papers. And she’s in Texas.”
“I think I’d rather be in Texas,” Mike admitted, picking up his phone. He dialed the number for the pilot and was answered in a rather surly fashion.
“What do you bloody want now?” Hardesty snapped. “Sorry, sir, I’d just laid my head down. Are we up again?”
“No,” Mike said. “But in the morning, get the plane up and to a dispersal field away from Paris.”
“Might I ask why?” the pilot said curiously.
“No,” Mike replied. “But you can come to your own conclusions. At least sixty kilometers from Paris. To the south or east.”
“Very well,” Hardesty said cautiously. “Given that information, perhaps I should move it now.”
“Up to you,” Mike replied, hitting the disconnect. “I’d hate to have my wings shot off by this.”
“That wasn’t exactly the most secure conversation I’ve ever heard,” Bruce said. “You could get your ass in a sling over that.”
“You’d have to find someone with a big enough sling,” Mike said, leaning back in the seat and folding his arms.
The more Mike looked at the stadium, and the area surrounding it, the less enthusiastic he became about it being the likely target. Yes, if they hit it they would get international coverage; that was guaranteed with any nuke. But the only people they would kill would be sixty thousand or so attendees, the pope, and a few hundred thousand people in the surrounding area. And the closest dense population was high-rise “low-income housing” that was mostly populated by Muslims. They’d definitely kill more Muslims than Christians. And it wouldn’t gut the City of Light.
TV vans were already setting up, with Klieg lights running and the works. He regarded them balefully as the sedan drove past. There were dozens of the damned things, any one of which could hold the nuke. With the lead wrapped around it, there was no way that there’d be a radiation trace. There was a small particle given off by nukes, a nucleotide or somesuch. That would get through the radiation shielding. But the detectors for it were huge, giant tanks of cleaning solvent of all things. He wasn’t sure there were any that were mobile. He’d have to ask NEST. On the other hand, if there were any, he was sure they were in use.
“This isn’t it,” Mike said, shaking his head as they passed through the security cordon. “Or if it is, I’ll take the hit. Head to Notre Dame.”
By the time they got there the sun was rising and they had to fight traffic. French drivers weren’t the worst in the world — Italians had them in Europe, and the entire third world had Europeans for bad driving — but they were pretty damned bad. Bruce negotiated the traffic expertly, however, with only an occasional curse, and got him to the security cordon alive.
Security was tighter here than at the stadium, but their plates, and especially Mike’s passport, got them into the area and he had Bruce park. He looked around at the buildings and nodded. This was a much superior target.
Notre Dame was a magnificent Gothic cathedral completed in 1345 after nearly two hundred years of construction. It was built on the Ile de la Cite, an island in the Seine River near the center of Paris which joined the Right and Left Banks through a series of four bridges. But it was only the last of several religious structures on the island. In turn there had been a Druidical grove, a Roman temple to Jupiter and a Romanesque church occupying the same island over the millennia.
Notre Dame, including its nave and secondary buildings, occupied only about half of the large island, with the rest taken up by two hotels of nearly the same antiquity. The island, thus, had little in the way of parking; the multitudes of attendees were anticipated to be brought in by bus while the press were relegated to an adjoining island, Ile Saint Louis, which had a far too small parking lot for the purpose.
Security was tight, with French police wandering all over the area, most of them carrying submachine guns on friction straps. Mike regarded the press area balefully. There were, if anything, more press vans here than at the stadium.
“This is the command post over here,” Bruce said, pointing to a set of police vans as they got out of the Peugeot. “You’d probably better get a security badge if you’re going to be wandering around the area.”
He led him over to command post, Mike’s diplomatic passport getting them through another layer of security and up to the rear of one of the vans.
“I take it you are the American who thought we would let a nuclear device slip into Paris,” a woman said as they reached the rear of the van. She was a narrow-faced brunette holding a cup of coffee and wearing a very pissed-off expression.
“That would be me,” Mike said, smiling. “And you are… ?”