Chapter 9
The train ride was uneventful. Marielle passed the time searching the internet for a good spot to meet with Anissa and Hanna and settled on an iconic English-language bookstore on the Left Bank.
When they arrived at the Paris Gare de Lyon, they took a car to The Four Seasons Hotel George V rather than going directly to their own hotel.
After slipping through The Four Seasons’ lobby, they headed toward Plaza Athénée, only four hundred and fifty meters away.
En route, they stopped on the stone stairs at the entrance to the American Cathedral in Paris.
While looking up at the famous soaring bell tower and the tall, skinny windows, they also checked for a tail and saw nobody.
To confirm, they entered the cathedral’s courtyard and strolled around the garden. Satisfied that they hadn’t been followed, they left the courtyard and returned to Rue du Boccador for the short walk to the Plaza Athénée.
It was nearly noon when they returned to the hotel.
As they entered the lobby, Olivia said, “We need to tell Poppy about our tail.”
Marielle checked the time. “She may have already left for the stadium.”
Olivia swore softly.
They mounted the stairs and walked along the fifth floor hallway to their room. Then they both froze at the same time, clocking the danger: the door to the royal suite was ajar.
Marielle drew her weapon as they approached the open door of the royal suite. Olivia was already armed, moving silently along the wall with the practiced efficiency that years of field work supplied.
They flanked the door. Olivia held up three fingers, then two, then one.
They burst into the suite together, weapons raised, clearing corners with synchronized precision.
It was, as the saying goes, like riding a bike. Of course, Marielle had never been the bicycle type. She was not fond of modes of transportation that involved sweating.
The sitting room was empty. So were the bedrooms. The bathrooms. The kitchen. The dining room.
Nothing.
Olivia lowered her weapon. “Maybe Poppy left the door open?”
“There’s no way. She’s a trained intelligence officer,” Marielle said.
“She’s either careless or someone came in after her,” Olivia decided. “I’m hoping she’s careless, frankly.”
Marielle holstered her gun and collapsed onto the sofa. The adrenaline drained from her system, leaving her shaky and exhausted. “I’m too old for this.”
“You’re thirty-four.”
“I feel eighty-four.”
“Wasn’t your grandmother teaching a yoga class when she was eighty-four?”
“I’m no Céline.”
“Who is?”
She was about to respond when her phone buzzed in her pocket. She scanned the message and laughed.
“What?”
“Chelsea and Leilah are pregaming. The pilot recognized Leilah at the gate and got them bumped up to first class. They’ve been drinking champagne all the way across the ocean. Hope Poppy’s limo driver doesn’t mind pouring them into the back seat when they land.”
Olivia grinned. “He just better hope Leilah doesn’t offer to drive.”
Laughing, Marielle started to return her phone to her pocket. Her laughter cut off like a record scratch when she noticed an earlier text that she’d somehow missed. It was from Anissa Sabban.
Unable to meet today. Apologies.
No. It wasn’t from Sabban. It was to Sabban. From her.
As she stared at the words she definitely hadn’t typed, a shiver raced along her spine and the little hairs on her arms stood at attention.
She hadn’t texted Sabban. So who had?
“What is it?” Olivia asked.
She shook her head instead of answering and checked her message history. The text to Sabban was there, timestamped at 11:47 a.m. Sent from her phone.
At 11:47, she and Olivia were in the American Cathedral in Paris’s courtyard. And her phone was in her pocket.
She had not sent this message.
“Here,” she croaked, her throat suddenly dry and sandy, as she thrust her mobile at Olivia.
In the space of a heartbeat, Olivia narrowed her eyes in confusion, then widened them in alarm.
“Someone hacked your phone.”
She powered it down, removed the battery and SIM card, and did the same with her own phone. Then she wrapped everything in the aluminum foil from the champagne bottle sitting in the ice bucket.
“Makeshift Faraday cage,” Olivia explained. “Not perfect, but it’ll block most signals.”
“Someone sent a message from my phone while I was carrying it.” Marielle thought it through. “Remote access?”
Olivia nodded. “Could be. If someone installed spyware on your phone, they could be sending messages, making calls, activating the camera and microphone.”
Marielle curled in on herself, violated. How long had someone been watching her? Listening to her conversations with Omar?
“When’s the last time you downloaded anything?” Olivia asked. “An app, a file, anything?”
Marielle thought back. “I haven’t. This is the phone Jake gave me at the airport. It’s clean.”
“But it’s not. Either it was compromised when you got it or ….” She trailed off.
“Or someone accessed it while I was carrying it around.” Marielle suppressed a shiver and raced through the implications. “If they have access to my phone, they have access to everything. My contacts. My messages with Omar. My location data.”
“Which means they know we’re at the Plaza Athénée,” Olivia confirmed. “And they know we’re planning to meet Sabban and Hanna.”
“If they want to grab Hanna, why would they send a message cancelling the meeting?”
Before Olivia could respond, a knock sounded at the door. Marielle’s hand moved to her weapon.
“Housekeeping,” a female voice called first in English, then in French.
Marielle arched an eyebrow. Housekeeping? It was such a well-worn trick it had become a cliché.
They moved to flank the door again. Olivia checked the peephole.
“There’s a cart,” she whispered. “For what that’s worth.”
“Not much,” Marielle whispered back. “But surely a place like this wouldn’t let randoms wander around. Especially not to this floor. They’d need the special key card.”
They held each other’s gaze for a moment, then Olivia shrugged and cracked the door open, keeping the chain engaged.
Through the narrow opening, Marielle saw a young woman in a hotel uniform standing in the hallway with a laundry cart.
“Excusez-moi, madame. Ms. Jones requested fresh towels for when your friends arrive.”
“Poppy requested this?” Marielle asked.
“Oui. An hour ago. Before she left for le stade.”
Olivia opened the door far enough to accept the towels while Marielle kept her hand on her holster.
Olivia closed the door and watched through the peephole to make sure the woman actually left. Then Marielle secured the deadbolt and chain.
“Poppy left the door open and requested towels? Are we sure she’s CSIS?” Marielle pushed her glasses up on her nose with more force than was strictly necessary.
“Don’t forget, she ordered room service last night. That’s an invitation for someone to push their way into the room. But then, she is Poppy Jones. What did you call her before you knew—a bubble head? Being deeply unserious, while admittedly talented, is her whole cover.”
“Her cover’s gonna get us killed,” Marielle grumbled. “We need to get out of here.”
“And go where? If they’re tracking your phone, they know everywhere we’ve been. We need new phones. New location. New everything.”
Marielle smiled slowly as Liv’s lament tickled the seed of an idea in her brain.
“I know that smile. What’ve you got?”
“We could use their access against them.”
Olivia frowned. “How?”
“Like you said, they know everywhere I go. So, we put my phone back together and turn it on. I’ll leave it on the charger. Anyone tracking us through it will think we’re still in the suite.”
“Meanwhile, we’ll be meeting with Hanna and Officer Sabban. It could work.”
“But first we need to reach out to Sabban, for real, let her know we did not cancel the meeting, and set a time and place. Without using our phones.”
“That’s easy,” Olivia said. “There’s a business center on the first floor. We’ll message her from one of the hotel’s computers. We should change the meeting time.”
“Just in case, let’s meet without Hanna first. Sabban can stash her somewhere nearby until we’ve confirmed we’re all clean.”
“That works. What about Poppy?”
“We’ll tell her what’s going on when we see her tonight. We can’t risk reaching out. Her phone could be compromised, too,” Marielle pointed out.
Olivia frowned. “I don’t like it. That leaves her in the dark for hours. Not to mention, Chelsea and Leilah land soon. Who knows if there’s someone waiting at Charles de Gaulle to tail them.”
Marielle didn’t like it either. “Is there any other option?”
“No good one,” Liv sighed. “We’ll have to trust that Poppy’s limo driver knows to watch for a shadow.”
They put Marielle’s phone on the charger in her bedroom and took the service stairs down to the lobby. The business center was tucked away near the meeting rooms.
Olivia logged into a generic messaging account she kept for emergencies and typed out a text:
See you at 13:00 at Shakespeare and Company bookstore. Don’t bring our friend.
She hit send and they waited. Three minutes later, a response appeared:
Understood. I love the rare books section.