“So Nikahd was serious then?” Alfie asked. “He wants that ship — why?”
“Who cares? He wants it as part of our deal.”
“They’re up to something,” Alfie mused. “Why do they need a special ship to transport the nuclear material; especially that ship?”
“I told you I don’t care,” Freddie sighed. “She simply needs to get the Iranians that ship.”
“What if she balks?”
“I’ll use my charm,” Freddy smiled. “Come on, the Frog downstairs suggested a restaurant down the street. They’re specialty it baked sheep’s head stuffed with — something — it’s all the rage.”
Freddy and Alfie left the room for dinner. Slade thought about it for a while. Using the remote function of his CIA software he brought up the notes Freddy had concerning the meeting. He came to the conclusion that Freddy didn’t need to attend the meeting with Eva Accompando; he’d do it himself.
The mechanism to accomplish that was easy. He did it by e-mail. Freddy had exchanged e-mails with Eva already. All Slade did was send Freddie a cancellation and have him in turn send Eva an e-mail describing one J. Slade, who would meet her instead. Eva e-mailed Freddy, really Slade, that was fine and to meet her for the eight O’clock sailing at slip number seven. That done, Slade had a date.
He checked in with the Paris division and they set up a meeting with Brueget at the concert.
After a few hours of half-sleep Slade gave up and walked along the Seine toward Notre Dame. That’s where the best free music in Paris. Vespers mass at Notre Dame was not to be missed. The astonishing acoustics of the cathedral, the feel of the place and the singing, not to mention the massive organ were well worth a bit of guilt.
Slade headed out, hoping the three mile walk would clear his head. It was not to be. A bunch of angry young men and women in Burkas were clogging up the river walk waving Palestinian flags, yelling for jihad and calling the Israelis “assassins.”
“Jihad in Paris? Oh great, they’re pissed that after two thousand rockets the Israelis are finally fighting back!”
At St. Michel’s, just a few blocks from the cathedral, the French paramilitary and gendarmes in riot gear cordoned off the demonstrators.
“Jihad-resistance! Jihad-resistance! Jihad-resistance!” shouted a terrorist on the bullhorn with a deplorable French accent.
“Terrorists!” he retorted. The French paramilitary troops knit their brows, and looked at him. He simply raised a brow and asked them, “Quelle serait l'Empereur Napoléon?”
The gendarme looked as if he was going to shove his rifle butt down Slade’s throat.
CHAPTER 16: Notre Dame
The gendarme wasn’t so much mad at Slade as much as himself. Slade asked a simple question and it cut to the bone of French pride: What would Napoleon do?
One of the gendarmes looked confused, but the other, the angry one replied, “Donnez-leur un relent de à mitraille!”
It was the famous answer Napoleon gave when asked what he would do about rebels in the streets. Legend had it that the general, a master of artillery, answered, “Give them a whiff of grapeshot!”
Slade nodded approvingly and told them, “France is for the French,” or in his heavily accented French, “La France est pour les Français!”
They gendarmes exchanged glances, sighed, and nodding their heads, admitted, “Oui monsieur, C’est vrai.”
It must have worked, because the next moment a demonstrator got in the gendarme’s face, yelling “Jihad! Jihad! Jihad!” The boy’s spit flew at the gendarme, who reacted appropriately, smashing his rifle butt in the demonstrator’s belly and taking him to the ground. He cuffed the boy, much to the amazement of those protesters nearby, and hauled him to his feet.
As they dragged the boy to the paddy wagon, the gendarme looked at Slade and said, “La France est pour les Français!”
“Vive la France!” Slade responded, adding to himself, “Maybe there’s hope after all.”
Feeling better, Slade made the cathedral in time for vespers. He went there for the music. The Notre Dame choir was world renowned; it wasn’t to be missed. Slade, despite his cold exterior, loved classical music.
After vespers he stayed for mass out of curiosity. Would the cardinal speak about the demonstrations? Slade was raised Catholic, and he’d gone to church with Helen on occasion as they grew up. Then he strayed for a few years; that is, until Helen and the kids moved in. After that, he attended with the family, but only after buying a video recorder for the Vikings games on Sunday.
Now it was easy to tape the games, and Slade still went so as to be a good example for the kids. It ate at him though; his present occupation didn’t fit so well with piety, thus his guilt.
That thought brought out Helen’s softly chiding rebuke in his head. “All right, I need to practice my French anyway,” he grumbled to himself. He stayed for mass.
The Cardinal of Paris was an elder man, robust with glasses. He gave firm, cogent and practical homilies. Tonight was no different. Slade’s French was barely good enough to keep up with him, because he was passionate, railing against the evils going on in France and the Middle East.
“Will we sit here while our brother Christians are given the choice of conversion, becoming slaves or death; while they are crucified along the streets? Will we sit here idly while our brother Muslims, those who wish to live in peace with us are slaughtered, left beheaded in ditches, their only crime that they do not wish to follow the path of jihad? Will we sit here idly while our Jewish brothers, and I remind you we are all Jews at our core, Jesus was a Jew and so are we; will we sit idly by while terrorists and jihadist murder their children and send rockets into their neighborhoods?”
The cardinal paused, looking soberly over the congregation. “Will we sit here idly while they shout jihad within sight of these sacred walls? We invited these people to our land and they repay us by insulting our sacred places and defiling our civilization. We cannot allow them to do so. We must be firm in our resolve and patient with our guests, yet like a father to a passionate son we must set boundaries and expect them to live within the law of our civilization as they would expect us to live within their laws if our positions were reversed.
“We must pray, but there is more we must do. We must resist the ignorant who are shouting without our walls. We must tell the jihadists here in our own streets that they are not welcome if they persist in this path of war and intolerance. If they wish to live in peace among us then Amen I say to you; you are my brother under the Almighty. Yet God taught us to defend ourselves, our families and our Faith. God gave us Charles the Hammer Martel to drive the hordes of jihadists from French soil; who will he give us now?”
Slade couldn’t help but like the cardinal. He felt hope after the homily; hope that France might remain French if only the cardinal’s voice and other voices carried the day. As he took his place in line for Communion he wondered if his hopes outweighed the reality of the jihadist infection spreading across Europe.
Helen’s little voice came on in his head again. He was about to take Communion from the hand of the cardinal. Helen reminded Slade it was not the proper place to be considering violence, war and evil. He whispered, “Dear cousin, you make it hard to do my job sometimes.”
The tall man in front of him must have heard his words, for he turned, looking over his shoulder, over the backpack he wore inside the cathedral, catching Slade with a set of dark eyes — almost black.
The old familiar warning bells went off in Slade’s head. The man was an Algerian, which was not uncommon in Paris especially. Many transplants from the former French colonies lived in the capital. This man was tall and lankly; the whites of his eyes stood out, almost glowing in the gloom of the dim cathedral. It was his expression that caught Slade’s attention; he’d seen it so often in jihadists, the half mad, half doomed demeanor — it set him on edge.