“They killed one friend of yours,” he said. “They’ve murdered four of mine. This is not America. Rarely is anyone shot here. And the police … we have not lost an officer in almost twelve years.” He shook his head. “Those men had families. To us this is a tragedy. It will haunt us for an age. But no matter how angry I am, I cannot chase these men out of Paris; I cannot hunt them to the ends of the earth. But you can.”
Hawker nodded.
“What will you do when you find them?” Lavril asked.
“After what you’ve shown me,” Hawker said. He shook his head.
Lavril nodded knowingly. He slid two sheets of paper across the desk toward them: signed release forms, with the key to the cuffs sitting on top.
“If you find them …,” he began, then stopped. “When you find them, please give them our regards along with your own.”
Danielle hesitated. With all the talk of Adam and Eve she felt as if they were making a deal with the devil themselves. She stared at the key as if touching it would bring dark consequences. Beside her Hawker stretched forward and snatched it. Apparently he had no such qualms.
He unlocked his cuffs, dropped them onto the desk, and then handed the key to her.
“Where do you suggest we start?” he asked.
“The man who was with Ranga on the tower has been identified as an exiled Iranian named Ahmad Bashir. He had a ticket to Beirut on Air France 917 for tonight. A similar ticket was issued to another passenger using the address at rue des Jardins.”
“For what?” Hawker asked.
“I don’t know,” Lavril said. “But it must matter.”
Danielle unlocked her own cuffs, stunned at the turn of events and the deal that had just been made. She feared the ground they now stood upon, but after all they’d been through, she wouldn’t let Hawker stand alone.
She tossed her cuffs to Lavril a little quicker than might have been necessary.
“There is a car waiting for you,” Lavril said.
She turned and made her way toward the door without responding.
Hawker lingered.
“Your friend does not approve,” she heard Lavril say.
“I don’t need her for this,” Hawker said calmly.
The words stung, but Danielle kept walking as if she hadn’t heard.
For Lavril, Hawker’s connection to Ranga made him the perfect choice to go after the killers, but it also made him the worst possible choice of all.
Danielle tried to think of a way to reach Hawker, to convince him that he was going down the wrong path, but she feared confrontation might just push him so far away that she would never be able to bring him back.
CHAPTER 14
Yousef sat against the wall in the back room of an abandoned house. He had done what he was ordered to do. But he had failed, failed to get the scientist’s samples or documents, failed to do anything but escape and survive.
He shivered in the darkness and the filth. His clothes had dried hours ago after his swim in the Seine, but now he’d drifted into shock.
He’d lost everything. His friends were dead. The police would find him soon. And he had lost any hope of ascending within the brotherhood.
He pulled a lighter from his pocket and flicked it.
Rats scurried away from the light, disappearing into a gnawed-out section of the wall.
In the dim orange glow, Yousef studied his surroundings: trash and decay scented with urine. Back where he’d started.
He felt the weight of the pistol in his hand. The weapon seemed heavier now, more substantial than when Marko had given it to him. It had drawn no blood, at least not yet.
He put it down and pulled out a cellphone, dialing from memory.
As it was answered, Yousef began to speak.
“I have failed you,” he said.
Marko’s voice came through the speaker, heavy and calm. “Where are you, Yousef?”
“I’m back in La Courneuve,” he said. “The police are looking for me.”
“Yes, they are,” Marko said, then paused. “But they will not reach you before I do.”
The words struck fear into Yousef.
“Are you coming to kill me?”
Marko laughed, and in the empty darkness of the house, the sound echoed. It haunted Yousef to the point where he thought of hanging up, of running. But where could he go? He looked at the gun on the cold floor. He thought of using it on himself, ending the misery before Marko and the others punished him.
“You have done better than you imagine,” Marko said finally. “The Master is pleased with you, Scindo. We will not leave you behind.”
For a moment the chills stopped. Yousef was alone and ready to die just to end the pain, but Scindo was not alone.
“Stay where you are,” Marko said. “I am coming for you.”
CHAPTER 15
Barton Cassel IV walked into his office on the thirty-eighth floor of the Cassel Pharmaceuticals office tower in downtown Nice. An American who preferred to be considered a citizen of the world, Cassel had taken over the family business from his father at the ripe old age of twenty-nine; thirty years later he’d transformed it from a sleepy little drug distribution company to an international producer of four blockbuster medications. CPC (Cassel Pharmaceutical Corporation) revenues had reached almost $3 billion per year. Profits would hit $200 million for the trailing twelve months, depending on the exchange rate.
Such wealth had transformed Cassel into an international playboy of sorts. He owned yachts anchored in Miami and Monaco; he had purchased a run-down castle and transformed it into a thirty-thousand-square-foot home where he threw lavish parties that attracted supermodels, movie stars, and Formula One drivers. Recently he’d toyed with the idea of buying some type of title so he could be officially addressed as Duke, Prince, or Count.
But for all his wealth, Barton Cassel IV was not a man without problems. To begin with, his four blockbuster drugs generated 95 percent of the company’s revenues, but three of them would go generic within the next year; the fourth would follow shortly, crippling CPC. Revenues would drop by half, and without huge layoffs and other cutbacks, especially in the horrendously expensive research and development budget, profits would disappear and the red ink would flow as if a dam had burst.
Despite a massive effort Cassel had nothing in the pipeline to replace them. And cutting the R and D budget meant there would be little likelihood of coming up with anything anytime soon.
That was one problem. As he switched on the light in his sprawling office, a second, derivative problem stared him in the face.
“Hello, Barton,” a voice said.
Cassel looked up. On a couch near the small kitchen and wet bar that were part of his office, he saw a man with a shaven head and a dark, rectangular tattoo wrapping halfway around his neck like a collar.
Cassel knew the voice, the tattoo, the ugly gaze.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“I came to bring you news,” the tattooed man said.
Cassel looked toward the door, a bit too obviously.
“Don’t bother,” the tattooed man warned. Then as if it weren’t a threat: “You’re going to want to hear what I have to say.”
Cassel fumed. He had the best security service in the country, multiple layers of protection from the street on up; he had cameras and scanners and even a key-coded lock on his own door that he’d just opened. All designed to keep him from dealing with “stuff.”
The man across from him definitely qualified as stuff.
“How the hell did you get in here?”
The tattooed man laughed. “Did you really think your store-bought security would keep me out? I spent half my life figuring out how to get through systems like yours. Most of them a hell of a lot better than your pathetic little show.”