Chapter 26
Passy, sixteenth arrondissement
Paris
“Hello, Harry.”
“You’re dead,” said Harry Crooks.
“Nine years now,” said Mac.
“Took you out in Beirut. Car bomb.”
“A taxi bomb,” said Mac. “But who’s checking.”
“Shake my hand,” said Crooks. “I have to know this is for real.”
“Hell, I’ll give you a kiss if you want.”
Crooks reached out and took Mac’s hand. “You bloody bugger. It is you.”
His friend had aged considerably. His hair was gone, his pate shaved as smooth as a billiard ball.
He’d grown a beard, far more white than black.
He had the same sparkly, inquisitive eyes; eyes that speared you, made you pay attention.
But now they lurked behind a pair of owlish, horn-rimmed glasses.
Still, he looked as fit as ever. The same old Harry. Broad, powerful shoulders tapered to an athlete’s waist. Biceps as big as softballs pressed through his tight black sweater. What was he? Sixty-five? Seventy? Not too far, Mac realized, in front of him.
They’d met at the tail end of the Iraq War.
Crooks was a big shot at GCHQ—Government Communications Headquarters—the United Kingdom’s signals intelligence–gathering organization, the rough equivalent of America’s NSA.
He’d come to Baghdad to help set up a cutting-edge IED detection system that relied on intercepting phone signals.
Mac had come to kill the people making the IEDs.
The team’s motto was “You track ’em, we whack ’em. ”
It wasn’t until Skylark, however, that they’d really gotten to know each other.
“Nice to see you, too, by the way,” said Mac. “Ummm . . . you mind if I come in?”
Crooks angled his wheelchair to block his entrance. “This isn’t a social visit, is it? Hate small talk.”
“No, Harry, it isn’t.”
“By all means, then,” he said, rolling back and away, a smile brightening his features. “Come in. Mac Dekker. As I live and breathe.”
Mac shut the door and followed Crooks down the hall and into a spacious living area.
There was a leather couch and a recliner, bookshelves filled to overflowing.
A Ghanaian flag hung in one corner, next to the Union Jack.
Mac remembered something about Crooks’s family immigrating to England when he was a teenager.
In all these years, he’d never lost the accent.
The room’s center of activity was a large L-shaped desk, filling up the far corner. Several laptops sat open alongside other electronic gadgetry, lots of loose papers, books.
“Still at it?” asked Mac, gesturing to the electronics scattered across the desk.
“You know me.”
“The original gearhead.”
A grenade had put Harry Crooks into a chair forty-odd years ago.
Crooks was SAS, a sergeant, part of a team charged with taking an airfield during the Falklands War.
He never talked about it, and Mac remembered whispers of his receiving the Victoria Cross, Britain’s equivalent of the Medal of Honor.
“It’s addictive, isn’t it?” said Crooks. “Listening in. Snooping.”
“Eavesdropping?” said Mac.
“I prefer ‘investigating,’” said Crooks. “I spent thirty years trying to discover what the enemy didn’t want me to. Not something you can just turn off. The desire to know.”
Mac wasn’t sure he had an answer. He’d spent the last chunk of his life trying to do the opposite. Not to snoop, not to listen in. It would have been too much otherwise.
“I won’t ask how you found me,” said Crooks.
“Christmas card,” said Mac. “I remembered the address. Rue St.-Niklaus. I thought it was a funny name. It stuck with me.”
“Bullshit.”
“I looked you up,” said Mac. “You’re in the phone book.”
Crooks pulled off his glasses and cleaned them on his sweater. “So, then, you going to tell me? Car bomb, taxi bomb . . . no bomb at all?”
“Long story,” said Mac.
“I’m retired,” said Crooks. “Take your time.”
“After,” said Mac gravely. It was not a subject he felt like going into. “If that’s all right.”
“It’s like that, then,” said Crooks, with sympathy. A man who knew pain and recognized it in others.
“And your wife?” asked Mac. “Still hitched?”
“Five years gone. Cancer.”
“I’m sorry.”
They shared a moment of silence. Time marched on. They were still alive when others weren’t. Maybe when they had no right to be.
“How do you like your tea?” asked Crooks.
“Milk. Two sugars.”
“Coming right up,” said Crooks. “Make yourself at home.”
He returned a few minutes later, a tray on his lap. He set the cups and kettle on a worn maple table.
“So it’s you?” he asked, pouring the tea.
“Pardon?”
“Steinhardt . . . wanted for murder. Hotel Bristol. The two Saudis. That what this is about? Don’t look surprised.
You’re burning up the wires. What do you think I do to keep busy?
Picked it up yesterday evening on the police band.
Caucasian male, six feet tall, dark hair, senior citizen, armed and dangerous. ”
“Senior citizen?” said Mac. “They really said that?”
“Well? Aren’t you?” said Crooks.
“Almost,” said Mac. “I guess.”
“One of the policemen said the suspect escaped by climbing out of the window. Reminded me of someone I knew way back when.”
“Was that here?” asked Mac, trying to recollect.
“Louveciennes,” said Crooks.
Louveciennes was a commune on the western outskirts of the city, home to the Chateau Louis XIV.
It wasn’t a real chateau, at least not in the historic sense.
It was a re-creation of a chateau that might have belonged to King Louis XIV, the Sun King, but built by the king of Saudi Arabia.
At some point during Skylark Mac had climbed out of one of the chateau’s windows.
“Forgot about that.”
“I didn’t,” said Crooks. “You saved my life.”
“Don’t exaggerate.”
“You saved all of our lives.” Crooks lifted his cup high. “Cheers, then, mate. To resurrection.”
Mac lifted his cup. “Live to fight another day.”
They drank their tea. Crooks regarded Mac and smiled. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I can tell you’re in a bad way. It’s just . . . just—”
“Harry, you don’t know the half of it. I’m in the shit.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Crooks. “Truly I am. It’s just that I know good and well this is going to end badly, but by God, I don’t give a damn. I’m with Mac Dekker, and we’re going to open up a bloody big can of worms. I can’t wait.”