Chapter 55
Paris
Mac peeked around the corner.
The corridor was empty. TNT was gone.
Mac rose from a crouch and advanced down the hallway. He stopped a few inches from the doorway.
“Ava,” he called. “Are you in there?”
“Mac?”
“Yeah, it’s me.” He peeked inside, keeping his pistol trained on the doors at the end of the hallway.
Ava stood from behind a desk of red marble, furiously pushing her hair out of her face. Her eyes were wide, “adrenaline eyes,” and she was wearing the dress from the day before, but otherwise she appeared unharmed. “Did you get him?” she asked, half out of breath.
“You mean TNT?”
“Go,” she shouted, waving a pistol at him. “Find him. Kill him.”
Mac ran to the end of the hall, looking both ways, not seeing anyone. Any emotion he’d had upon finding her alive and seemingly unhurt came and went before it registered. Her mission had become his. Kill TNT. Aye, aye, sir. Good to see you too.
Mac entered the media room, then rushed down the adjacent hallway. There was no sign of TNT and no time to search for him, no matter the urgency in Ava’s voice. She might want him dead, but the police were in the house. It was a matter of minutes, less even, until they reached the fourth floor.
Mac retraced his steps to the office. “He ran away.”
“Shit,” said Ava. She was kneeling beside a woman who lay on the floor just behind the desk. The woman’s head was canted unnaturally, her eyes open. It was a position he’d seen too often.
“A friend?”
“Something like that,” said Ava. “Her name was Dahlia. She worked with Zvi.”
Mac nodded. Zvi was Zvi Gelber. They’d met once or twice back in the day. No time for questions, no matter how badly he wanted to know. Knowing that Zvi Gelber was involved was enough. “We have to leave.”
“So it was you,” said Ava, pointing to the window.
“I needed a distraction,” said Mac. “Get everyone out of the house.”
“To find me.”
“Yes.”
“She said you wouldn’t listen,” whispered Ava.
“Pardon me?”
“The message in the hotel. ‘Get out.’ Guess it didn’t sink in.”
“I only saw it after two guys tried to kill me,” said Mac. “I wasn’t in the mood to take advice from anyone.”
“I didn’t know,” said Ava.
“You wanted him to kidnap you,” said Mac.
Ava nodded, and a piece of the puzzle fell into place.
“Did you get what you came for?” asked Mac.
“Think so.” Ava picked up the laptop off the floor, then came closer and kissed him. “Good to see you.”
“Sure?”
“I’m sure,” said Ava. “I had him, you know.”
“Yeah, you did,” said Mac.
“Thanks anyway,” said Ava. “Maybe I didn’t have him.”
“We can’t take her,” said Mac, gesturing to the woman. Dahlia.
“No,” said Ava. “It’s all right.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s not over,” said Ava. “There’s a bomb. He means to use it.”
“I saw the tablets in your medicine bag,” said Mac. “The ones from Israel. It took me a little, but I figured it out. For radiation sickness. That kind of bomb?”
“The bad kind,” said Ava.
The sound of activity on the floors below them grew louder, more frantic. Doors opening and slamming. Raised voices.
“We’re going up and out,” said Mac. “Roof, then hotel next door.”
“You have it all set,” said Ava.
“Don’t go in if you don’t know how to get out.”
Mac led the way upstairs, moving quietly and resolutely.
No time for talk. A glance into the stairwell; two floors below he caught a rustle of blue.
The police officers’ voices carried through the building as they called to one another, going room to room, checking for gunmen or terrorists or anyone killed or wounded, as TNT (or at least his voice) had claimed in his call to the emergency services.
They reached the top floor. “Where to?” she asked.
Mac pointed to a door at the end of the hall. “Stairs to the roof.”
“What are we waiting for?”
Mac hurried to the door and held it open, allowing Ava to pass.
He closed the door behind him, checking if there was a lock.
There wasn’t. Up a short flight of stairs.
The door to the roof was open, and as he walked through it, he recalled with crystalline clarity that he had closed it behind him.
It was a rule to conceal your activity. Leave things as they were. Or had he?
He jogged past the skylight to the brick wall and took hold of the rope. “When’s the last time you walked the wall?”
“Never,” said Ava. “That was your training.”
“Always a first time,” said Mac.
He pulled the rope tight and handed the end to her. “Give me your shoes. Make it to the top of the wall, then onto the roof of the hotel. It’s a little slick. If you need to, take off your stockings; it will be easier with bare feet.”
Ava removed her shoes and handed them to Mac. “What then?”
“I have a room at the hotel. Regroup. Figure out how to find this guy.”
“Versailles,” said Ava. “There was an important international conference in town this weekend, and they are going to sign a treaty there.”
“Let me guess,” said Mac. “Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar are involved.”
“Ten points,” said Ava.
“First thing: We tell the cops,” said Mac. “Better yet, we call your people in Paris.”
“They won’t listen,” said Ava. “That’s why I’m here. And forget the police. By now, I’m on some sort of watch list. Believe me, these guys are thorough.”
“Then the Agency.”
“You?” Ava stepped closer to Mac. “Don’t you get it? This is on us.” She took the rope in both hands and pulled it taut, giving Mac a side-eye. “If you say ‘You got this,’ I’ll kill you.”
“One step, then another. Walk the wall.”
Ava placed her left foot on the wall and hauled herself upward. Right foot. Left foot. Suddenly, she was halfway to the top. “Harder than it looks,” she said, between clenched teeth. She glanced over her shoulder. “Mac! Down!”
Mac threw himself onto the ground. He knew an order when he heard it.
As he fell, he looked behind him. A slight woman in dark clothing fired a gun at him.
The bullet struck the wall, a few inches below Ava.
Ava let go of the rope and fell to the rooftop.
Mac rolled to his left, reaching for his pistol.
A bullet grazed his shoulder, paralyzing his arm.
No matter how he tried, it refused to move.
The shooter approached him, pistol held with both hands, aimed squarely at him. Mac lay helpless. He remembered the shadow stalking him early that morning, an elfin figure wearing a beret. And Jane’s warning about the red flag on his name.
The woman stopped a few feet away and took dead aim.
Mac stared her in the eye.
Like that, her head jerked backward. A spray of blood and brain erupted from the back of her skull, a red vapor, here then gone. She collapsed, falling to one side and landing on the skylight. Glass fractured, then gave way. The woman crashed into the room below.
Ava had already replaced her pistol and taken hold of the rope. “Later,” she said. “We have a lot of catching up to do.”
With redoubled effort, she climbed the wall. Mac stood below her, still dazed, unable to think of anything to say. It had begun to rain, the sky growing darker by the minute, a cold snapping wind out of the north.
Ava reached the top of the brick wall. She put a foot on the slate roof, tested it, then pulled off her stockings one at a time. “Almost there,” she said. “Go ahead. Come up.”
“I’m outta here,” said Mac. “Finally.”
Before the words had left his mouth, police stormed onto the roof. A half dozen counterterrorism troops formed a semicircle around him, assault rifles at their shoulders.
“You. Don’t move,” shouted a female officer. “Both of you. You are under arrest.”