Chapter 22
Rue des Rosiers
Paris
Cyrille guided her Renault along the Rue des Rosiers, the window rolled down to better view the addresses.
The Marais had changed dramatically in the past few years.
When she was growing up, it had been a kind of ghetto, a place where Jews lived and few others visited.
A dour, backward neighborhood populated by men in black coats and funny hats, a part of Paris stuck in the nineteenth century.
Today it was as fashionable as the Left Bank.
Department stores. Boutiques. Everything shiny and polished.
Très chic. She was not sure that was a good thing.
Cyrille turned left and parked two blocks farther along, in front of a synagogue. She killed the engine and threw her workbag onto the passenger seat. Matthieu was long gone. A quick stop in the Bois de Boulogne. A dark hollow. A deep pond. It would be a week before anyone found him.
A look over her shoulder to check for unwanted attention.
The street was deserted. She unzipped the bag and removed an automatic pistol.
She attached a folding stock and a noise suppressor, then inserted the magazine—an abbreviated five-round clip—and chambered a round.
She drove her thumb hard on the safety. She exited the car in a rapid, rehearsed motion, deftly sliding the pistol beneath her overcoat.
She slipped on a beret for good measure.
With the beret, you didn’t know: man or woman.
She approached the corner with caution, like a tourist arriving at a hallowed site.
The lights still shone from the top floor.
No need for a confrontation. Sooner or later, the visitor would depart.
Cyrille crossed the street and found shelter in the doorway of a coiffeur—the Salon Vogue—and retreated until she was concealed by shadow.
From her vantage point, she had an unobstructed line of sight to the building’s lobby and vestibule—both unlit—like her, bathed in darkness.
All she could do now was wait.
Cyrille hated waiting. Her thoughts went to dark places, invariably landing on the night that had changed everything. The Sahara. Outside of Timbuktu. Yes, darling, there was such a place, and it was as bleak and desolate as anyone could imagine.
Slow duty at Camp Barkhane. A peacekeeping force sent to protect the city’s residents from the Islamic State of the Sahel, the local chapter of Terror Inc.
The Islamic State was on vacation, or so Cyrille and her fellow soldiers had joked, as they passed around bottle after bottle of the local Malian tipple.
One hundred forty proof and guaranteed to turn the mildest man into a howling wolf.
And Cyrille’s mates were not mild, not one of them.
A few bottles and they turned their eyes on Cyrille.
Pretty, brunette Cyrille, one of three women in the company, and the only one on duty that terrible night.
First they joked, then they pawed, then they threatened.
Every minute, she grew less human in their eyes.
At 7:00 p.m., she’d been Sergeant Montcalm, the rock of the company.
By 10:00, she was a “queer” who needed to be taught a lesson.
By 11:00, she was an animal put there to fulfill their needs.
It was the lieutenant who egged them on.
He was the one who pinned her arms behind her back and ordered the others to strip off her clothes.
He wanted proof she was really a woman. She remembered the loud voices, the sweaty faces, the rough hands.
The screen went black the moment one of them stuck his hand down her pants.
It had come back into focus much later. By then, the lieutenant was dead and two of the men lay writhing on the barracks floor with broken limbs.
Cyrille hated waiting.
To calm herself, she drew a breath and repeated a mantra her sergeant had taught her on her first drop into Mali. Res firma. Res-feerma. Latin, roughly translated: “Stay hard.” Sound advice.
A light appeared in the building’s lobby.
The door to the elevator opened. Mac Dekker stepped out and crossed to the vestibule.
Cyrille slid the pistol from her coat and rested the stock against her shoulder.
She inclined her head, sighting on Dekker’s chest, then thumbed the safety off and laid her finger against the trigger. Doucement. Softly.
Dekker walked to the vestibule door but did not leave the building.
He stood where he was, studying his phone .
. . or more likely, Matthieu’s phone. Cyrille could take the shot now, but she didn’t want to break the glass and call attention to herself.
Let Dekker come outside. No one would hear the muffled shot.
Dekker would fall to the ground. Cyrille would dash across the street, deliver the coup de grace, and be gone seconds later.
Up the street, a car turned the corner, tires screeching, and accelerated madly. A Simca, its old four-cylinder engine growling, music blasting from open windows. Cyrille ducked back into the shadows as the car passed.
Seconds later, she retook her position. To her chagrin, the vestibule was empty.
Cyrille panicked. How? Where? Then she spotted Dekker, several doors down, cloaked in shadow beneath the awning of a café.
Now, when Cyrille needed traffic—just one car, please Lord—there was none.
The street was empty, the neighborhood so still she could hear a footfall.
She studied Dekker. Take every precaution, her handler had advised.
And then?
There was no way Cyrille could approach Dekker without being seen.
But what choice did she have? Her target stood one hundred feet away.
She couldn’t risk a shot at this distance.
She was no sharpshooter. Shoot and miss, and she’d lose the element of surprise.
If Dekker went to ground, there was no telling when Cyrille would get a second chance.
Cyrille raised the weapon to her shoulder. She shut her right eye. Her vision wasn’t as good as it once was. Dekker appeared blurry and unsteady. She detached the stock, folded it, and stuffed it into her coat. She would take Dekker close up. It was what she did best.
Cyrille poked her head from the doorway and watched as Dekker stepped from the protection of the awning and onto the curb and looked in both directions. He was expecting someone.
It was now or never.
Cyrille left the doorway and walked up the street, head down, pistol concealed in her pocket.
She sensed Dekker looking her way, but she didn’t dare meet his gaze.
She could see him out of the corner of her eye.
A few steps and she would make her charge across the street, firing as she ran.
There was no chance he could escape. Imagining the act, Cyrille enjoyed a burst of confidence.
And then the confidence evaporated.
Two blocks to the north, a police car rounded the corner, blue lights flashing, driving at speed. Another police car followed it, and another.
Cyrille ducked into a recessed doorway, throwing herself against a wall, shoulders as flat as she could pin them.
The cars sped by, passing Dekker first, then her, and braking to a halt in front of Rosenfeld’s building.
Officers piled out of the cars. There was a great deal of commotion.
Slamming doors, opening trunks, grabbing heavy firearms, shouting orders, throwing on helmets.
She looked for Dekker. There was no sign of him beneath the awning. No movement at all. Of course he’d vanished. He’d made a run for it like any sane man.
But no. Cyrille caught a glimmer of light. On, then off. Dekker’s phone. Like her, he’d ducked into the shadows. What was he waiting for? A ride—what else? Had to be.
She freed the pistol from her jacket. Her plan could still work. The police were fifty feet away, across the street and to her right. Only a few remained near their vehicles; the rest were storming Rosenfeld’s building. Dekker was hiding a hundred feet from them, maybe fifty feet from her position.
Cyrille took a knee and aimed at Dekker, elbow resting on her thigh, both hands supporting the weapon. It was a clean shot, the target immobile.
Then Dekker was moving, leaving the safety of the recessed doorway, stepping onto the sidewalk, hand raised. Cyrille followed him in her sights. A car approached and pulled to the curb. Dekker rushed toward it, reaching out an arm to open the rear door. Rideshare? An accomplice? It didn’t matter.
Cyrille pulled the trigger three times in rapid succession. Three times the pistol spat fire, the shots masked by the police’s continued ruckus.
She looked on as Dekker opened the door and threw himself into the back seat. Had she hit him? Impossible to know.
For a few seconds, the car didn’t move.
Cyrille left the doorway and approached the automobile. The car’s brake lights flashed. It accelerated. And then it was gone.
Mac Dekker knew what it was like to be shot at. He knew the hiss of the air, the curious sizzle felt on his skin, the momentary disruption in hearing that occurred when a bullet zipped past.
He threw himself into the back seat. “Go,” he shouted.
The driver looked over his shoulder. “Good morning,” he said. “Everything all right?”
Three shots. Someone had fired three rounds at him. Mac looked into the driver’s eyes. He was a kindly man, a welcoming smile for his passenger at 4:00 a.m. No, he could not tell him.
“I’m fine,” Mac answered. “Just in a hurry.”
Still the driver hesitated. Mac ventured a look out the rear window. He caught a movement in a doorway across the street. A bent, urgent figure. Short, thin, emerging from the shadows, wearing a beret and a heavy topcoat, hands thrust into its pockets. A hitter.
Finally, the driver returned his attention to the road and slowly pulled away from the curb.