Chapter 2 #4
Where he’d walked down the corridor without any attempt at quiet, he now flattened himself against the bulkhead, wishing he could simply melt into it, through it.
Oh God, he had to get out without being seen.
The longer he stayed, the greater were his chances of being discovered.
Simonet moved as fast as he could back down the corridor, throwing frantic glances behind him.
The men he’d seen were armed. He was totally defenseless in this steel corridor, an unmissable target.
He had no idea what kind of noise he was making because he couldn’t hear anything above the thudding of his heart in his ears.
By some miracle, by the grace of God, Simonet managed to make it up on deck and down off the ship without being seen. He found the electric cart where he’d left it, and ten minutes later, he was locking his office door behind him, sweating profusely, gulping in air, totally terrorized.
Oh God, oh God.
This was ten million times worse than cigarettes or contraband goods or even cocaine. This was terrorism. This was what had taken his two daughters, Hélène and Josiane, on that terrible day in Toulouse. The day his world ended.
He could still remember frantically calling the Railway office in Toulouse because his two daughters, his two treasures, were visiting the city, thinking—my two darlings will call me and tell me they’ve been out shopping or visiting a museum or flirting with handsome young men.
But it wasn’t to be. Josiane and Hélène had been on the train coming into the Toulouse Station, and had been blown apart. Someone had pressed a detonating device that turned human beings into human hamburger, including his beloved daughters.
Simonet had travelled to Toulouse and brought his daughters home in body bags that contained small body parts instead of bodies. And he’d come home to a wife whose broken heart had simply given out during the night.
The jihadists had cost him everything he held dear, everything he had in the world, and he made it his business to study everything about them.
He bought books, read magazine and newspaper articles, watched Al Jazeera, attended night courses on the history of Islam.
Over the past few years, he’d become an expert on Islamic terrorism.
So Jean-Paul Simonet had understood immediately the significance of what he’d seen in the hold of the Marie Claire. If he closed his eyes, he could see it as if he were right there again, standing terrified and quaking in the doorway.
Ten crew members working on the door to a secret cavity that had been cut out of one of the holds. Simonet could see into the cavity, see the air mattresses, the stock of bottles of mineral water and several large canisters with the black-and-yellow international biohazard sign.
And most terrifying of all, at least forty men, prostrate at prayers just inside the door. Forty men with shaheed jackets stacked on one side and lime green scarves around their shoulders, just waiting to become shaheed batal—martyr heroes.
Terrorists. Headed for New York with bombs strapped around their torsos and access to radioactive material.
Simonet’s fingers trembled as he fumbled for the phone, dropping the cordless receiver in his haste.
His hands were slick with sweat, he could barely breathe around the terror in his chest. His fingers punched in 17, the emergency gendarmerie number, but he hung up almost immediately.
This information was too important to be given to a telephone operator.
His brother-in-law knew the Commissaire de Police.
That’s it—he’d plead a headache and leave early.
There would be suspicions if the police swarmed his office building, people would talk, his name would be known.
If there was one thing Simonet knew, it was that these people were vicious.
He didn’t have much to live for but by God, he didn’t want to die at the hands of these canailles.
No, much better to leave early and go downtown to the Commissariat and speak with the Commissaire himself.
Having a plan calmed him down a little, until he heard footsteps coming down the hallway.
No one came to his office in the early afternoon. Were they coming for him? He stood, terrified, listening as the steps came closer, closer. Two sets, two men.
The information! He had to get it out!
His eyes fell on the list of files to be sent out for translation. Perfect. Simonet knew his way around computers and he knew steganography. Inside of five seconds he managed to hide the necessary information in a file. He pressed ENTER and turned at the sound of his door opening.
Two men, one small and armed, the other huge and un-armed, burst into the room. The big one stepped forward and with a contemptuous twist of his big hands, snapped Simonet’s neck.
The big man opened his hands and Simonet’s lifeless body collapsed to the floor. Simonet’s last thought had been of the thousands, perhaps millions, of Americans he had saved from attacks he hoped he had stopped.