Chapter 42
Passy, sixteenth arrondissement
Paris
“Think it’ll work?” asked Mac.
“My part or your part?” said Harry Crooks.
“I thought it’s one plan,” said Mac. “Both parts together.”
“I’m not the one breaking into a prince’s mansion,” said Crooks. “All I can promise is that you’ll have a chance to get in. A chance, nothing more. After that, you’re on your own.”
“You’re a real confidence builder,” said Mac.
“Confidence is one door down,” said Crooks. “Next to bullshit and vanity. I’m selling the truth. It was confidence that put me in this chair.”
They’d spent an hour discussing how to get into Tariq al-Sabah’s maison particulier.
The problem wasn’t how to break in so much as how to lessen the chance of discovery once he was inside.
A six-story home. Twenty-two rooms. An unknown number of occupants, including armed security.
The odds were overwhelmingly against Mac discovering Ava before he himself was discovered.
The solution was plain to see. It was also impossible.
Somehow Mac must convince TNT and everyone else in the house to get out.
If Mac couldn’t do it, he had to find someone who could.
The time had gotten to 1:00 p.m. The clouds had parted.
A weak autumn sun shone through a pale sky.
Mac flipped through photographs of TNT’s Paris residence.
His problem was that the magazines showcased the same rooms each time: the living room, the primary bedroom, the study, the kitchen.
While he was able to glean a little bit of handy information about each room, he was left with little or no idea where in the six-story building they were located.
All he knew was that Tariq would not keep Ava in any of them. She was locked up somewhere else.
Most helpful was a photo essay about the home’s expansive rooftop garden.
Mac wasn’t interested in what flowers Tariq al-Sabah was growing or the bougainvillea hanging from the trellises.
He was drawn to several photographs showing the door leading to the rooftop garden.
To look at, it was a hundred years old, weather beaten, in need of paint, and guarded by a simple Schlage lock.
It was, Mac decided, the only thing in the entire building TNT hadn’t renovated.
He had his way in.
But, as they’d already concluded, getting in wasn’t the problem. It was what happened afterward.
Crooks handed Mac a cell phone. “It’s all set up. When you’re ready, call 112. The number that will appear on their call screens belongs to TNT, if that was him that kidnapped Ava.”
“It was him,” said Mac.
Crooks called it “spoofing,” using software to disguise a caller’s number by substituting another for it.
Most often, it was used by telemarketers to fool people into answering what otherwise might appear on their phone’s register as Spam or an unwanted solicitation.
“You can’t just call and ask for help,” Crooks had said.
“Before they send anyone out, they have to confirm who exactly it is calling.”
“How long before they show?” asked Mac.
“To TNT’s place?” Crooks spun in his chair. “A Qatari prince on the Avenue Montaigne? Fifteen minutes tops.”
Mac liked fifteen minutes. He didn’t want to be hanging around TNT’s rooftop garden longer than that.
“Did you finish writing the speech?” asked Crooks.
“More like three lines,” said Mac. “What do you think?”
Crooks read Mac’s words. “How did you get through school with penmanship like that? At college in Ghana, they would have beat my knuckles bloody.”
“Palmer Method went out with my mother,” said Mac.
“Easier to decipher cuneiform,” said Crooks.
“Just read it,” said Mac.
“Yeah,” said Crooks assuredly as he read the text. “I’d buy it. Especially if it came from Tariq’s mouth.” He returned his attention to his monitor. “Look at this. I found something that nicely suits our purposes. Not too long. Impeccable audio quality.”
Crooks hit play. The video clip showed TNT, attired in his native garb, addressing a gathering of business owners at a store opening in Doha.
“It will be our government’s policy,” said TNT, in his American-accented English, “to support all business owners and entrepreneurs with an initial interest-free loan of seventy-five thousand US dollars. Repayment is not required for a period of ten years. If, in that time, the business employs more than twenty persons, the loan will be forgiven in its entirety.”
Crooks hit Stop.
“Is that all you need?” asked Mac.
“More than an adequate sample size,” said Crooks.
“First let me upload the audio sample. Next, I type in your little speech. Done.” He turned to face Mac.
“It may take a minute to generate. These new AI chips are fast. All the same, it takes billions and billions of iterations to generate an accurate aural copy.”
The computer pinged. Crooks gave Mac a look. “Here we go.” He hit Play. Mac listened as the computer read aloud the lines Mac had written. It was him. It was TNT speaking.
“The program’s called Parrot,” said Crooks. “It used the speech we uploaded of TNT talking to the businessmen in Doha to clone his voice. Then it turned around and used the cloned voice to read the lines you’d written.”
“That’s scary as hell,” said Mac. “No way you can tell the clone from the real thing.”
“The future is now,” said Crooks. “We are who we choose to be . . . or who we want others to think we are.”
“So once I’ve got the cops on the line,” said Mac, “I access the program and hit Play.”
“One more thing,” said Crooks.
“What’s that?”
“Pray.”
Crooks rolled his wheelchair across the room to an antique wooden dresser.
He opened the bottom drawer and withdrew a compact item wrapped tightly in a blue-and-white cloth.
“Last used May the twenty-eighth, the year of our Lord 1982. Goose Green Airfield. Las Malvinas Islands. ‘The Falklands’ for you and me.” He unfolded the cloth and handed Mac a pistol.
“What is this?”
“My old service weapon. Browning nine millimeter.” Crooks unfurled the cloth, and Mac saw that it was an Argentine flag.
“Took this down myself from enemy HQ. Thought it was all over. Remember what I said about confidence. I’d forgotten to double-check that we’d cleared the building.
One guy was left. Course, it had to be the Argentine Army’s version of Rambo.
Shot him twice in the chest before I ran out of ammo.
Before the SOB went down, he lobbed his last grenade at us .
. . me and my squad. Eight men. Not one of us wounded in three days of battle. I had no choice but to jump on it.”
Mac looked at the flag. There was blood on one corner. “You did the right thing.”
“Course I did,” said Crooks. “Else we’d all have been dead.
” He tapped the arms of his chair. “For queen and country. Oh, and don’t worry about the gun.
I take it out every so often, clean it, have a trip down memory lane.
I swear that when I hold it, I can hear the gunfire, smell the smoke.
Do you miss it, Mac? You know, the battlefield? ”
“No,” said Mac. “I’ve had my share. But I miss the mission. It told me who I am.”
“Now you have a new one,” said Crooks.
“We have one,” said Mac.
Crooks smiled at the thought. “Mind, you can’t shoot anyone,” he said. “Murder. Mission or not.”
“What about self-defense?” asked Mac.
“You’re the one breaking and entering,” said Crooks.
“Guess we’ll have to play it by ear,” said Mac.
Crooks unwrapped a silk handkerchief and dumped nine bullets into Mac’s palm. “If you need any more, you’re screwed.”
Mac fed them into the magazine. It was harder than he remembered.
“By the way,” said Crooks. “What do you call this . . . what we’re doing?”
“‘Swatting,’” said Mac. “Sending a Special Weapons and Tactics team to a house to respond to a threat.”
“No SWAT here,” said Crooks. “In France, we have RAID. Search, assistance, intervention, and deterrence.”
“Call it ‘raiding’ then,” said Mac. “Same difference.”