‘I’ll tell you when we meet. Not before.’
‘If you won’t tell me now, I’m gone.’
‘You won’t make it on your own.’
‘I beg to differ.’
‘If you really believed that,’ the voice said quietly, ‘you wouldn’t have called.’
Thirty seconds.
Victor stared at his reflection in the glass of the phone booth. It was hard to look himself in the eye. He took a breath. ‘If we meet, where?’
‘Paris.’
‘When?’
‘Tonight.’
‘Why so soon?’
‘Because I might not be alive tomorrow.’
Forty seconds.
‘Give me the details.’
‘Call this number when you arrive. I have to go now.’
The phone went dead.
She’d ended the conversation first. It was a good sign, despite the anger it caused him. He’d been trying to drag it out to a minute to test her. If she’d have let it go over sixty seconds he would have known he couldn’t trust her. Still, ending it early could just as easily have been a trick to convince him she was genuine. If it was, she was in for a big surprise. He didn’t trust anybody.
But there had been a desperation in her voice that made him think she was the real thing, that she wasn’t trying to set him up, that she was in as much danger as he. Though he rationalized a good actress or a gun in the face would add that sense of desperation particularly well.
This whole thing had started in Paris, and now he was being asked to return. His enemies had tried to kill him there already, and going back seemed like a great idea if he fancied suicide. If his enemy knew he was arriving today, the airport and train stations could be put under surveillance. Kill teams could be set in place. He’d be easy to spot. If he made it out onto the streets he could get himself a weapon from his safety-deposit box, but that too might be compromised. He couldn’t risk it so that meant no gun. He would be going straight to his foe’s doorstep, unarmed, making their job easier. It was the last thing he should be doing.
But if there was even the slightest chance the broker knew something useful, then he needed to hear it, whatever the risks. It was either that or start running and never stop. In his gut it felt like a set-up, and no matter how much he thought about it he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was walking into a trap. And walking into it of his own free will.
By going back to Paris he would find out one way or another what was going on. If she was telling the truth, so be it; he could use whatever information she had to work out what to do next. If it was a trap, then at least he’d know for sure he was on his own. That or he’d be dead and it wouldn’t matter.
Two choices.
Go to Paris or disappear for good.
Neither prospect was enticing, but spending the rest of his life as a target of the CIA held the least appeal.
CHAPTER 30
Paris, France
Saturday
00:09 CET
Named after someone whose life had been filled with such complexity, Charles de Gaulle Airport’s stark simplicity always seemed to Victor like a deliberate irony. Even in the best of moods, passing through it could feel like a long walk to nowhere. The terminal was especially uncrowded, even for midnight, with only a few people anxiously checking the departure boards for news of their delayed flights. There had been particularly bad weather over much of western Europe. Either that, Victor thought, or the French air-traffic controllers were on strike again.
He’d seen no one at the airport whom he thought was a shadow, but he couldn’t be sure. At the airport he was safe from being killed if not arrested. There were armed and wary guards who would shoot anyone without a second’s hesitation who even looked as if they might pull a gun. Without a weapon he was safe from them, at least. As soon as he was in the city, everything would change, if he hadn’t been taken into police custody by then. In a city where murders occur daily, his own would barely warrant attention. He wouldn’t die easily though. If he was walking into a trap, then, for his enemies’ sakes, there had better be nothing short of a platoon waiting for him.
Making it through passport control had given him the confidence that the French authorities weren’t expecting him. It was one less thing to worry about. He would still be careful of the police and security services, but it was the CIA that was currently sitting at the top of his threat radar. He made straight for the exit, not bothering to do any countersurveillance. If there were people watching him, he wasn’t going to shake them all, and the more time he spent confined, the easier he was making their job. His best chance was to get into Paris as quickly as possible. In the city he could blend into the scenery, disappear.
He reached the exit without incident and went through the automated doors fully expecting to be gunned down the second he stepped foot outside. The sky above was black, the clouds angry, roiling. The bitter wind bit at his flesh, an almost visceral assault. The rain came down straight and hard. Victor saw the raindrops pelting the ground as a hail of bullets.
There were fewer than a dozen people outside, but any number of them could be a killer just like him. He’d come too far to turn back now. He’d made his choice, good or bad, and he was going to see it through. But no one shot at him, no one so much as made eye contact. If he was to die, it wasn’t going to be here in the rain.
It had been five days since the attack in Paris, and he would never have believed then that he would be back before the week was out. But a lot had happened in that time. The scratches on his cheek were as good as gone, but his chest still ached, and there were scabs on his hands and wrists. Victor wasn’t sure how many lives he had left. He climbed into a taxi and told the driver to take him to Paris and the closest pawnshop.
‘None will be open.’
Victor reached for the seat belt. ‘Just find one.’
They drove into the city, Victor silent despite the driver’s attempts to draw him into conversation.
‘Do you mind if I smoke?’ Victor asked.
The driver shook his head.
It seemed a long time until the car pulled up alongside a kerb. The shop had a barred and meshed window, a reinforced door. Two of the letters in its yellow neon sign were black.
Victor told the driver to wait and went inside. He came out five minutes later, a few hundred euros lighter, but heavy one Benchmade Nimravus knife with a four-and-a-half-inch black tanto blade, two unlocked prepaid cell phones, and a car charger. He’d examined the knife in the store, checking its sharpness and balance before the scrawny owner’s staring eyes. Victor climbed into the back of the taxi and had the driver plug in the first phone.
‘Are we close to a bar?’
The driver smiled into the rear-view mirror. ‘Like that, is it?’
‘Yes,’ Victor replied. ‘It is.’
The driver took him to a nearby bar. It sat near an intersection. The road outside was busy with people and cars.
‘Take me to another one.’
The driver gave him a look, but Victor said nothing. The next two bars he likewise dismissed. The fourth was on a quiet street, no nearby intersections.
‘Better?’ the driver asked.
Victor reached for his wallet.
In the bar he bought a vodka and told a confused bartender he needed to borrow some tape. In a toilet stall he taped the knife, point up, onto the skin of his lower back. He tucked only the front of his shirt back in. It felt better to be armed. Now, at the very least, he could take some of them down with him.
He used the bar’s payphone. The line connected after just a few rings.
‘Are you at De Gaulle?’ were the broker’s first words.
‘I’m in the city.’
‘Write this down,’ the broker said. ‘I’ll meet you there.’
‘No, you come and meet me.’ Victor told her the bar’s address. ‘If you’re not here in thirty minutes all you’ll find is an empty glass.’