“I–I don’t speak French. In English?” But she had a pretty good idea of what he wanted.
“We have some questions for you.”
“About what? I’m here on vacation, I didn’t do anything wrong. Well, I crossed the street outside the crosswalk, but a lot of people were. It wasn’t just me. I didn’t know. Is there a fine in France for jaywalking?”
Come on, Hector. Where the hell are you?
The man — who looked to be in his twenties — loosened his grip and squinted. “Just come with me,” he said in heavily accented English. “I’ll explain.”
“But I’m supposed to meet my girlfriend for dinner. She’s gonna wor—”
“You can call her from the police station.” He tugged again, pulling her toward the curb — where, dammit, now she saw it. A white police cruiser.
The cop’s hands were large and they had a good grip around her forearm.
“Police station? Whoa, wait a minute. What’d I do? In America, you have to tell someone why you’re arresting them.”
“We are not in America, no?”
Smartass.
“But—”
“Also, mademoiselle, you are not under arrest. Yet.”
Vail used her body weight to stop their forward progress. “If I’m not under arrest, I’m not going anywhere except to that restaurant to meet my girlfriend.”
“I do not think you understand.”
“No,” DeSantos said, behind the officer and pressing something into the back of the man. “You don’t understand. The lady said she doesn’t want to go with you. Take your hands off her.” He gestured at Vail — a look that told her to take the handgun from the cop’s holster.
Vail did so surreptitiously and placed it in her jacket pocket.
“Now, DeSantos said, “back up slowly. No fast moves.”
He guided the officer a few feet toward his compact Peugeot sedan and opened the back door. “Get in.”
Vail looked around, hoping the cop’s partner was not in the vicinity — if he had a partner — and saw a commotion half a block away, in the plaza, near a trash bin. People were drawing close to it, trying to see what the fuss was about.
“Don’t worry about it,” DeSantos said, clearly noticing Vail’s concern.
He was right — and she refocused her attention on the officer, who was now in the sedan. She knew the Paris police had budgetary issues, so perhaps patrols were done solo. I sure hope that’s the case here.
“Hey,” DeSantos said, taking care not to use her name. “Cuff him.”
She pulled a flexcuff from her pocket and strapped his wrists together. Another one secured him to the headrest of the front seat, which would prevent him from moving or leaving the car.
DeSantos slammed the door and turned to survey the street.
“You started the fire?”
“A diversion. I needed to get as many eyes off you as possible. Let’s get out of here.”
They moved quickly down the block, outside the grouping of locals and tourists, who were watching the flames lick higher and wider in the plaza. The fire brigade’s sirens were approaching in the distance.
“There’s an RER station,” Vail said, indicating directly ahead.
DeSantos suddenly diverted left. “Negative. LE approaching, near the entrance,” he said, using the abbreviation for law enforcement.
They walked against traffic on the sidewalk, along a concrete retaining wall.
And that’s when things got dicey.
55
Uzi’s phone vibrated — and jolted him and Fahad to attention. He dug it out and answered Tim Meadows’s call.
“The first set of prints Mr. DeSantos sent me, which looked like they were pulled off the screen of a cell phone, belong to Amin Qamari, a Moroccan assassin who’s wanted for several murders in Amsterdam.”
“We’ll have to tell our Dutch friends at the General Intelligence and Security Service Mr. Qamari can be removed from their most wanted list. He’s dead.”
“Well, that’s a damn shame.”
“Notify Director Knox,” Uzi said. “He’ll take care of the notification when the time is right. What else you got?”
“One of the other prints matches Doka Michel, the leader of the French Islamic movement, Sharia Law for France Now. Its goal — as the group’s name implies — is to oversee the transition from traditional French government to traditional Islamic Sharia law using rapid population expansion and voter mobilization to transform the country.”
“Sounds so innocuous and official. Like the mission of a real diplomatic envoy.”
“He’s also suspected in planning several terrorist attacks, including the one on the Lyon police station last year that killed nine officers. According to what I was able to dig up, with Hoshi Koh’s assistance — and by the way, she’s a wasted talent in your office, Uzi. You really—”
“Tim, back on track. What’d you dig up?”
“Michel has colleagues in Belgium and the Netherlands, all focused on that one goaclass="underline" taking over their respective countries by instituting Sharia law.”
“Michel … why do I know that name?”
“I was wondering how long it’d take you to clue in on that. He’s the son of Alberi Michel—”
“The man who stole the Jesus Scroll from the Qumran caves in the late 1950s.”
“Give that man a gold star. Well, let’s make it a silver because you took—”
“Anything else?”
“Still working on the others.”
“Thanks, Tim. Let me know when you’ve got something.” He disconnected the call and sat there, wondering what it meant. He related Meadows’s findings to Fahad, who nodded.
“The Agency has been monitoring these Sharia movements for a while.”
“So what will Parisians do in twenty years when the Muslim majority votes in Sharia law?”
Fahad thought a long moment and said, “A lot can happen in twenty years.”
“So you don’t think it’ll come to pass.”
“Our Agency analysts don’t see anything that’ll stop it. The French culture will disappear. There’ll be some radical shifts pretty much immediately. As you’d expect. There’ll be a purge of nonbelievers. A civil struggle, riots, maybe a civil war.” He chuckled. “The Agency will probably get involved, agitate some of it themselves. We’re good at that. But the bottom line is that the popular majority will be Muslim. This is the extremists’ plan, we know this. They’ve told us for years now that this is a war that they’re waging with population overbreeding. They’re outbreeding the native Parisians six to one? Something like that. And their plan is to do this throughout Europe.”
“Seems like an incredibly effective strategy,” Uzi said.
Fahad nodded. “I have nothing against Islam. I’m a Muslim myself. But the system of governing is archaic. It’ll set women’s rights back centuries. It’ll set everything back. Not just here. Lots of cities in Europe will lose their culture. You saw what happened in Iraq with Islamic State. Wherever they could they obliterated entire civilizations, cultures that were different from theirs. They were ‘infidels’ who did not believe. According to a literal interpretation of the Koran, which is what the extremists follow, if you don’t believe, you’re supposed to be killed.”
“I guess it’s a part of the natural course of political evolution. Every culture, every civilization falls eventually. That’s been one of history’s lessons. Everything eventually comes to an end.”
“That’s kind of dark.”
Uzi bit his lip. “As much as I don’t want to admit it, it’s just the way it is. Futurists have been predicting the end of American society for years. Let’s hope their future is not ours.”