Chapter 63
Notre-Dame de Paris
“Follow me,” said Yehudi Rosenfeld. “There’s someone who’d like to say hello.”
“I hope it isn’t far,” said Tariq.
“Not far at all,” said Rosenfeld. “Just one question.”
“Oh?”
“You’re not scared of heights?”
Tariq couldn’t tell if Rosenfeld was joking or not.
He was in no mood to jump through hoops.
This was hardly the time. He followed Rosenfeld down the aisle and back toward the entry.
Instead of turning left, however, Rosenfelt turned sharply to the right, walking past a table of votive candles.
Beyond a stout pillar was a narrow door guarded by a large bearded man wearing a dark blazer two sizes too small.
Seeing Rosenfeld, he swiftly opened the door.
“I hope you don’t mind a few steps,” said Rosenfeld. “The minister thought you’d like to share the view.”
“The view,” said Tariq, only then registering the white stone staircase behind the door. “Of what?”
“Versailles, of course,” said Rosenfeld. “If it’s not too cloudy, we should have a front-row seat.”
Tariq didn’t relish the idea of climbing two steps, let alone over two hundred. “I don’t think that is a good idea,” he said. “It may be safer inside.”
“We’re thirteen miles away,” said Rosenfeld. “The blast will peter out less than a mile from the palace. The shock wave shouldn’t get farther than three or four. This is a baby bomb. We’re not barbarians.”
“And after that?” asked Tariq.
“I give us thirty minutes before any fallout reaches us,” said Rosenfeld. “We have our plans in place.”
Rosenfeld started up the stairs. Tariq followed, reluctantly at first, shy of mind and body.
The narrow staircase was barely wide enough for one person and spiraled steeply upward.
Round and round. To gaze at the steps above him was to risk vertigo.
Tariq stopped counting at eighty. By then, he was holding his side, grimacing with every exertion.
Then a strange thing occurred. Instead of weakening his resolve, the pain and fatigue strengthened it.
He must continue, he told himself, not for himself, but for his people.
The concept of sacrifice was novel, if not alien, and he seized upon it enthusiastically.
It was not a matter of fulfilling his own destiny but of giving his all to fulfill his country’s.
Jabr was a traitor. He, Tariq, was its savior.
What better proof than his willingness to suffer on its behalf?
His breathing labored, sweat crowning his brow, Tariq climbed faster and faster, fueled by a messianic fervor.
And then, they were there.
Rosenfeld stepped through an open door and onto a narrow walkway bordered by a chest-high parapet.
Below lay the glittering lights of the city of Paris.
There was the Eiffel Tower, flashing blue, white, and red in celebration of the city’s role in this latest diplomatic triumph.
To the north, shining like a golden bulb, was the dome of Sacré-C?ur.
It was windy, a drizzle falling, clouds blanketing the city.
Beneath the clouds, visibility was unlimited in every direction.
“Over here.” A short, corpulent man shouted, his English heavily accented. He wore a dark overcoat and open-collared white shirt, a kippah visible on his head. “I had to call in a favor to let us up here.”
“Itmar, hello,” said Tariq, catching his breath.
“My colleagues banned me from the announcement,” said Itmar Ben-Gold. “I told them, fine. What do I care? I won’t go. I think I got the better deal.” He handed Tariq his phone. “Live feed from Versailles. It’s there. You did it.”
Tariq regarded the screen, wiping perspiration from his brow.
The camera was trained on the French president, standing behind a lectern while addressing a large audience.
Tariq recognized his father and brother seated in the front row, as well as other officials from his own and neighboring countries.
On any other day, he might have called them “colleagues”—“friends,” even.
“See it?” said Itmar Ben-Gold. “There. To the right. On the table. You can’t miss it.” He laughed with malice. “In front of their very own eyes.”
Tariq brought the phone closer. The methuselah of champagne stood prominently on a side table, a few dozen crystal flutes neatly lined up to either side.
He noted the bottles of apple cider, as well, for those who refused to raise a glass filled with an alcoholic beverage.
His father would not be one of them. A hundred euros to one, the emir would sneak a sip.
“Ready when you are,” said Ben-Gold.
Tariq took off his backpack. “Let me get it.” He unzipped a pouch and removed the transmitter.
“That’s it?” said Rosenfeld skeptically.
“What did you expect?” said Tariq.
Ben-Gold pointed to his phone. “Your brother is speaking.”
Tariq peered at Jabr, despising him. How the tables had turned. “I’m ready.”
“Twelve . . . ten.” Ben-Gold slowly recited the sixteen-digit code that deactivated Samson’s safety. “Three . . . seven.”
Tariq entered the numbers dutifully.
“. . . and one.”
Tariq hit send. A moment passed. He kept his eyes on the screen.
“Well?” said Ben-Gold.
A light glowed green on the transmitter’s screen.
“Samson is primed,” said Tariq. His hand was shaking.
Not nerves. Fatigue. He was just tired. He looked to his left at the profile of the Chimera, the gargoyle-like statue perched on the ledge as it looked over the city, casting away evil spirits.
It seemed to be looking at him too. Mocking him.
“The second code,” said Tariq.
“Wait,” said Ben-Gold. “I want to see them all together, shaking hands and smiling like Sadat and Begin. Filthy bastards.” He looked up from his phone and stared hatefully at Tariq. “We will never be friends with your kind.”
“The detonation code, please,” said Tariq.
“Wait, I said.”
“Itmar, now.”
But Ben-Gold didn’t take orders from anyone, especially an Arab. “What? Are you nervous? No one knows we are here. Is it the man downstairs? He works here. He was doing me a favor. A question of interfaith kindness.” Ben-Gold approached him. “Is there something I should know?”
“This isn’t the time to gloat,” said Tariq. “Let us do what we came for.”
“You look unwell,” said Ben-Gold. “What is it? Something’s wrong. I can tell. Look, you’re bleeding.”
Tariq felt something warm at the corner of his mouth, tasted salt and iron. He was bleeding internally. He wiped it with the back of his hand. “The code, minister,” he said, banishing his pain, towering over the smaller man. “Now, Itmar.”
Ben-Gold stared at him a moment longer. “Four . . . seven . . . nineteen . . .”
Mac found Harry Crooks just inside the cathedral, positioned by the nearest pillar. “You missed him,” said Harry. “He was here. He met another man. They spoke for a minute, then left through another exit.”
“What did the man look like?” asked Ava.
Harry glanced at Mac, who nodded. Yes, that’s Ava. Go ahead. You can tell us. “Red hair,” said Harry. “Beard, three-piece suit.”
“Rosenfeld,” said Ava.
“They went through that door over there,” said Harry, rolling his chair past the central portal, then pointing to a door cut into the far corner of the cathedral. “And Mac, he’s hurt. He isn’t walking correctly.”
“You hit him,” said Mac, remembering Jane’s words about Ava’s training. Wet work. Of course she hit him.
Ava frowned. “Maybe.”
“Quick now,” said Crooks. “Don’t waste your time talking to me.”
Mac put a hand on Crooks’s shoulder. “Thank you.”
He hurried across the church, past the table of votive candles, winding his way through the mill of visitors. He found the door Crooks had mentioned. “North stairs,” read a sign on the wall next to it. He tried the handle. Locked.
“Sir, please, the tower is closed.” A tall, burly man in a docent’s blazer rushed toward them. “No entry is permitted.”
“I need to speak with the men who just went upstairs,” said Mac.
“That’s not possible,” said the man. “Their visit was by private arrangement.”
“May I have a word,” said Ava, offering an intimate smile, a hand on his arm. “We’re close friends of Mr. Rosenfeld and Prince Al-Sabah.”
“A prince? He told me he was from Israel. Mr. Ben-Gold. He is an important man.”
“We work with Mr. Ben-Gold,” said Ava. “The three of them are expecting us. I’m sure we won’t be long.”
The guard studied them. An older couple—she, an attractive woman in a lovely dress; he, a respectable man with a steady gaze. He pulled a key from his belt and unlocked the door. “A quarter of an hour at most,” he said. “Shalom.”
Ava took off up the narrow, pale steps, running as fast as she could.
Mac did his best to keep up, one hand brushing the interior wall to keep his balance.
Round and round. They passed several small windows cut high into the stone wall, the view affording them a peek over the square below, each time higher and higher.
A torrent of cold air flooded the staircase from above. Ava stopped dead and bent close to the steps above her. Mac followed her lead. A doorway several steps above her opened onto a walkway. He could just make out the silhouettes of the gargoyles perched on the parapet.
“I see them,” said Ava. “Ben-Gold is there.”
“Just the three?” asked Mac.
“As far as I can tell.”
“You don’t happen to have a gun,” he said.
“I’d prefer a grenade,” said Ava. “But I suppose we’d damage the building.”
“Forgot mine back at the hotel,” said Mac. “Or was it in your suitcase next to your pistol?”
“Get the transmitter,” said Ava. “My guess is that TNT has it. He has to enter a code to set off the bomb.”
“Samson?” said Mac.
“Jane told you.”
Mac nodded. “How big?”
“One kiloton,” said Ava.
Mac swore.
“You go first,” said Ava. “And Mac . . . no mercy.”
“No mercy,” said Mac.
He scooted past her. He peeked around the doorway, saw the men bathed in shadow. A short, fat man was closest, back to him. Behind him, a tall, thin, bearded man; and next to him, TNT, looking his way, holding something in his left hand and tapping on its screen. The transmitter.
Mac drew a breath and rushed through the doorway. No mercy.
“Fifteen,” pronounced the short man as Mac slugged him in the solar plexus, then clutched his overcoat and threw him to the ground.
It was Itmar Ben-Gold. Mac jumped over the prostrate body, taking Yehudi Rosenfeld by the lapels and slamming him into the tower wall.
Rosenfeld’s head struck the stone with a sickening thud.
Mac took his face in his hand and bashed his head into the wall again.
Instead of dropping, however, Rosenfeld grabbed onto Mac’s shoulders, fingers digging into him like an eagle’s talons.
“Twelve,” gasped Ben-Gold, rolling onto his side. “Twelve! The last one.”
As Mac struggled with Rosenfeld, Tariq al-Sabah spun and ran in the opposite direction down the walkway, rounding a corner.
“Move.” Ava pushed her way past Mac in pursuit of TNT. Her toe caught an uneven stone. She stumbled. Her knee scraped the ground. “Shit.”
TNT had disappeared into a doorway at the top of several steps.
There was only one staircase up and down.
Ava ran after him, mounting the stairs and reentering the tower.
She saw him immediately, maybe ten steps farther along.
He moved with a stutter step, two or three steps quickly, then a step off balance.
She caught up to him, throwing out a hand to grab an ankle.
Her fingers latched onto his calf. He fell and cried out, dropping the transmitter.
Ava climbed a step, reaching for the device.
Tariq kicked her viciously, the blow glancing off Ava’s jaw, stunning her.
He was up again, transmitter in hand, and climbing.
Ava took a step. Her foot came out of the sneaker, and she fell.
“Dammit.” She tore off the other shoe and ran up the stairs, her breath ragged, as winded as she could recall ever being. Round and round. Up and up. The staircase growing narrower, if that was possible. Then she caught sight of him, first a foot, then another, then the entire man.
“Tariq,” she called. “Stop. Don’t!”
TNT glanced at her over his shoulder. He looked different than she recalled, even from this afternoon. His eyes burned with a zeal, a mania, evident even in the dimly lit stairwell. No, he would not stop.
Ava redoubled her efforts, reaching out to trip him, just missing again and again.
Like that they reached the top. Tariq lurched through an open doorway onto a broad wood-plank floor.
The ceiling stood open high above them, a latticework of exposed rafters.
From the rafters hung numerous bells, some new, some old, some small, some enormous.
They had reached a belfry of Notre-Dame.
Tariq stood facing her, the transmitter in his hand. His eyes flitted from the screen to Ava.
“Twelve,” he panted. He raised a hand, and she could see his fingers trembling, he more fatigued than she, unable to govern his limbs.
“Please,” she shouted. “Don’t.”
Tariq brought his index finger to the screen. “Too late.”
The bells of Notre Dame began to toll. First the bourdon, the largest bell and lowest in tone, then another and another, five in all, in slow succession, the concuss of copper on copper deafening, pounding their ears unlike any sound they’d known, reverberating throughout their entire bodies.
Tariq dropped the transmitter and covered his ears.
Ava dove across the floor, and her fingers closed around the transmitter.
She had it. She rolled onto her back, bringing the device to her eyes, seeing the number twelve on the screen.
Tariq kicked her in the ribs, and she drew herself into a ball to protect the transmitter.
He kicked her again. “Give it to me,” he shouted. “It’s mine.”
The kicking stopped.
Amid the cacophonous tolling bells, Ava heard a cry, a scream, and a thud below her. She uncoiled herself and saw Mac standing above her.
“Are you okay?” asked Mac.
Ava could only read his lips. She nodded. He extended a hand and pulled her to her feet.
Ava looked around her. There was no sign of TNT. She showed Mac the transmitter and shrugged. Had they stopped it?
Mac pointed to the west. Toward Versailles. The skyline was clear, a tapestry of glittering lights.
A minute later, the bells ceased.
“Where is he?” asked Ava.
“No mercy.” Mac looked over the railing. Ava followed his gaze and found Tariq al-Sabah a hundred feet below, his body caught in the woodwork, his torso impaled on an exposed rod of steel rebar.
Ava looked at the transmitter. “What do I do with this?”
“Don’t touch it,” said Mac.