“Bonjour, Monsieur,” she replied politely, shaking the offered hand.
“Captain Jean Leclerc at your service, Madame. We have been asked by our Minister of Defense to offer you whatever assistance you require.”
“I’m Frankie, this is Sarah, and this is Flynn,” she replied, introducing her colleagues in turn. “And Flynn’s team,” she added as the Delta team began to emerge from the rear of the plane after gearing up.
“Can we offer you breakfast, coffee or any refreshments?” asked Leclerc.
“No thank you, we just need to get to this Crédit Agricole, asap,” said Reid, handing over the address written on a slip of paper.
Captain Leclerc looked at the address and motioned them onto a small bus that awaited their arrival. A two-minute ride had them on the other side of the airport and surrounded by helicopters.
“At this time in the morning, traffic is horrendous for getting into the center of Marseille. This will be far easier.” He motioned towards the smaller helicopters, Eurocopter Fennecs. “I believe time is of the essence?”
“Absolutely,” replied Frankie, moving towards the small chopper.
“Three of these should fit us in,” he said, holding the door for Frankie, Reid and Flynn to board the first chopper before jumping into the pilot’s seat.
Frankie listened intently to the captain instructing French police to clear a section of road on the Vieux Port. Her Swiss finishing school training, taught almost entirely in French, insisted on by her mother, was finally paying off.
“The Vieux Port?” she asked, once Leclerc had ended his call.
“The old port,” he replied in English for the benefit of the others. “It’s a large harbor, mainly leisure boats now but it’s in the heart of Marseille, the oldest city in France. The premier port of France and the gateway to the world,” he smiled, proud of his native city.
With a history lesson en route, the journey was over in no time. They neared the magnificent sight of the port and a police cordon was already in place to allow them to land on the road outside the Crédit Agricole. Reid reached into her bag and gave Frankie and Flynn each a small white facemask. They both looked at it and then at the crowd that had already gathered around the perimeter of the cordon.
“I’m not so sure that’s a good idea, nor whether it will make any difference” said Frankie.
“Good idea or not, we should take precautions,” insisted Reid.
“I agree with Frankie,” said Flynn handing his mask back. “This will cause panic and to be honest, I’m not sure it would do much good anyway!”
Frankie handed hers back too.
Reid looked at them both and shook her head in disgust but also replaced her mask in her bag. “But I’m keeping them close,” she said, laying them carefully at the top of her bag. “One whiff of disease and you’re putting them on!” Flynn told the Deltas to wait in the helicopters while they followed Leclerc into the bank. The General Manager of the bank had already been alerted by the police of their arrival but, as he had been given no information other than senior investigators were about to arrive to speak to him, he was a bag of nerves by the time Frankie and Reid approached him.
“Vous parlez Anglais?” asked Frankie.
“Oui, a little,” he replied nervously.
“Please don’t be worried,” said Frankie, reassuringly. “You have done nothing wrong, we just want to ask you about a customer of yours.”
The bank manager relaxed slightly but given banking laws and the requirements to vet customers’ identities, his concerns were not entirely alleviated.
Reid took the photo of Nick Geller from her bag and showed it to the manager. Relief flooded across his face. “Non,” he said emphatically. “He is no customer of mine.”
Reid produced some of the mock-ups. The manager paused briefly at one of them.
“You recognize this man?” prompted Frankie when she noticed the pause.
“Non, just a little familiar,” he said.
“Familiar how?” she pressed.
“One of my clients, a rich man, Monsieur…”
“Jacques Guillon?” “Oui,” he replied. “But if you already knew, why—”
“We wanted to put a face to the name and not the name to a face,” replied Reid. They had agreed in advance that an independent verification of Nick was going to be far more convincing than giving the name and seeing if Nick’s disguise matched one of the mock-ups. Plan A was to see if the manager recognized Nick. Plan B was to give him Jacques Guillon’s name and hope it was Nick.
“But Monsieur Guillon is older, with a limp,” he said.
“Older? His hair is graying at the temples?” asked Frankie.
The manager nodded.
“And the limp, Flynn?” she asked.
Flynn limped across the room, almost identical to Nick’s limp. “Street Surveillance 101. One of our first lessons in how to change our appearance.”
“Merde!” exclaimed the manager.
“We need every transaction he’s made. Locations, times, amounts, currency, anything you have,” Reid urgently requested.
“Of course, Madame,” replied the manager. “And his safety deposit box?”
“He has a safety deposit box?” asked Frankie.
“Oui, he arranged it yesterday when he was here.”
“He was here yesterday?!” they said in unison.
“Oui. He had a small metal briefcase with him. I didn’t see it when he left, I assume he left it here.”
Reid reached into her bag and withdrew the small white paper masks, including one for the manager.
“I suggest you tell your staff to wait outside the branch while we check the safety deposit box,” suggested Reid, handing out the masks.
The manager’s face suddenly paled at the realization of what the mask meant. “You think he could have given us that disease? Like the man on the video?”
“No,” lied Frankie. “We just have to take precautions, health and safety laws.”
From the expression on the manager’s face, acting was not a line of work Frankie could fall back on. He tentatively and after some persuasion took them down to the basement and into the vault that housed the safety deposit boxes, his mask fixed tightly to his face.
Flynn pulled the box out of the wall and with all three of them looking on, each holding their breath, he opened the lid.
Chapter 40
With sunrise just minutes away, the training camp came to a standstill for Salat Al Fajr, the morning prayer, to be said in unison by hundreds of trainees. Nick felt at one with the group as they faced Mecca to the east and the words of the Quran echoed around him in a predawn chorus. As the final words died away, the sun peeked over the horizon and gave the worshippers a hint of the power that Allah possessed. It was as though he had heard their thanks and praise of him and rewarded them with a sunrise in their honor.
“Nick, my brother,” said the man who had led the prayer, embracing Nick warmly.
Nick stood back and held the man at arm’s length smiling into the face of a fellow warrior. “Ibrahim, my brother.”
“You broke my heart, brother,” he continued somberly. “But then,” he smiled, “you put it back together and now it is much stronger!”
Nick knew he was referring to his killing the Caliph and then the shooting of the President. One act explained another.
“I wished I could have told you, but the Americans needed to believe I was their hero. I needed their trust and I needed my shot at the President. Why my bullet didn’t fly true, only Allah can know.”
“Allah wants the man to witness the disaster that will befall his corrupt and evil empire. Death would have been the easy route. Allah wants to punish him more,” Ibrahim said.