Chapter 59
?le de la Cité
Paris
“Here we are,” said the cab driver.
The taxi braked forcefully, veering to the left. Tariq’s eyes opened. He lifted his chin from his chest. “What?” he muttered, unaware he’d been dozing.
Tires brushed the curb as the vehicle came to a halt.
Tariq stared out the window at a large building, a monolith bathed in light.
Despite the short rest, he felt worse than he had before, as queasy as if he were on the deck of a rocking boat.
Spots danced at the perimeter of his vision. He touched his side and winced.
“Twenty-eight euros,” said the driver.
Tariq fished a wad of bills from his pocket and handed the driver a €100 note. “Keep it.”
The driver accepted the bill with a concerned look, his eyes on a spot of blood decorating one corner.
Tariq opened the door and hauled himself from the car.
He took a step, and his knees buckled. He stumbled, barely catching himself before he fell to the pavement.
He gathered himself, squaring his shoulders, drawing a breath.
He could do this. A stiff breeze lashed his face.
He tasted rain on his lips. The cold, damp air and the bracing scent of the Seine revived him.
The nausea left him. His vision cleared. He remembered why he was here.
Vespers. Five forty-five. The codes.
Tariq gazed wide eyed at the structure towering before him.
He raised his head to appreciate its enormity.
For all his time in Paris, he had never visited.
Why should he? The last time he was in a church of any kind was back at Eton Chapel a million years ago.
But this was not a church, this was a cathedral.
Perhaps the most famous cathedral in the world. Notre-Dame de Paris.
Tariq checked his watch. The time was 5:42.
After all this, right on schedule.
Go ahead, he told himself. Say it. It was fated. And yes, Tariq believed it.
The broad plaza in front of the cathedral was nearly deserted. Police officers stood near the tall ornate doors to the cathedral. “Portals,” he recalled. He dropped his pistol into a waste bin, then ran a hand through his hair and mopped his forehead with his sleeve.
A guard at the center portal looked inside his backpack.
No need to hide the transmitter. For all intents and purposes, it was a cell phone.
The transmitter, however, could only call one number.
Once connected, Tariq must enter two sixteen-digit codes: the first to remove the weapon’s safety, essentially unlocking it; the second to detonate it.
Tariq entered the cathedral. He allowed his eyes to adjust to the dim interior and to take in the chandeliers hanging everywhere, the Gothic flying buttresses high above, the ribbed vaults, the stained-glass windows. He refused to be awed. It was not his god.
He turned to his left and walked behind the back row of chairs, half filled, and turned right down the aisle running down the left side of the nave.
Memories from a theology class rose from a foggy past. The interior of a cathedral was built in the shape of a Latin cross.
The nave ran down its center. The transept crossed the T, so to speak, and the altar sat at the far end. As it was, so shall it ever be.
Every few steps, a small chapel was set back into the wall, almost a grotto. He stopped at the sixth in line, where there was a statue of a woman holding a small child. A bronze nameplate identified her as St. Genevieve.
“She saved Paris from Attila the Hun,” said a voice behind him. “Don’t ask me how.”
Tariq turned. “Hello, Yehudi. Interesting spot to meet.”
“I couldn’t think of a safer place,” said Yehudi Rosenfeld.
“An Arab and a Jew conversing inside a cathedral,” said Tariq. “Nothing to see here, officer.”
“Not an Arab and a Jew,” said Rosenfeld. “Look around you. What do you see?”
Tariq’s eye wandered the interior of the cathedral. Even at this hour, it was crowded with men and women ambling slowly here and there, heads upturned, reading guidebooks, listening to audio tours. “Tourists,” he said.
“Exactly what we are,” said Yehudi Rosenfeld. “Tourists.”