The Phoenix Affair, Dave Moyer [best ebook reader for surface pro TXT] 📗

trying to decide what to do.

He was unarmed, of course, right off the plane, with his luggage in tow, but no help in there. He assumed the man he was looking for was armed, or he figured he had to assume that. “Not good busting in on an armed bad guy at two-fifteen in the morning unless you’ve got something to trade,” he murmured to the damp darkness around him. He moved on down the street for a block, found a wrought iron fence with sharp spikes on top, and looked at it in the gloom. He gave the nearest spike a half-hearted yank, but it was solid as, well, iron, and he gave that up.

“No good,” he said aloud to the darkness. “No good at all, and it’s no use getting killed by this guy tonight.” He reached into his pocket for the cell phone, and dialed Ripley.

“Speak,” Ripley answered.

Jones heard the car in the background. “This is Jones, but I’m not packing, and I figure this guy might be a little shy. Do you have his phone number?”

“Wait one,” Ripley said, then he read it off. “Got it?”

“Got it,” Jones said. “Let’s see if I can flush him.”

“Careful, Jones. Call me when you have something, but don’t make a mess.”

“No problem.” Jones stabbed the “END” button. He dialed the Paris number. Three rings, four, and an answering machine picked up. There was a greeting that said simply “leave a message” in French, then the tone. Man’s voice, smooth, excellent French, like a native. He hung up. Jones looked across the street at the wide building, three stories, the apartment he wanted was number 125, on the ground floor. “There might be a window at the back,” he mused, “maybe no drapes, I take a peek inside, see if I can get in nice and quiet.” But he shook his head, “no good. Didn’t come all this way to die stupid.”

It was a judgment call, to be sure. Smart money walks away at a time like this, but Jones, fresh from his desk job and charged up by the long flight and his pseudo-chase across North Paris simply could not let it go. On his side of the street still, he walked east for a hundred meters until he felt sure he was lost from the view of the window he was interested in. He crossed the street, pulling the wheeled luggage, turned back west toward the apartment building. He was there, and he turned up the walk, leaving the bag standing on the side of the road, walking casually like he owned the place, or lived here. He stopped at the edge of the front window, listening. There was a dim light on in the back room, he could see the corner of a window on the back side of the building, but there was no one visible, no one moving. He backed away and to his right for moment, considering the spacing of the windows and doors, gauging the size of the apartments. Now he frowned. He turned and walked to the center of the apartment block where there was a breezeway through to the back of the building. Very slowly, very quietly now, he moved toward the rear window of apartment 125, sure now that this must be the bedroom. He found the window, and with his back pressed hard to the wall he craned his neck to his left to peer inside. Nothing. The dim lamp showed the foot-end of a bed, and an empty wall opposite it. There were no feet. Slowly, quietly still, he retraced his path to the breezeway, back out to the road and his bag.

He looked at the sky, and around in a 360 degree sweep of the near horizon of low buildings. It was brightest to the South, more city lights still on that way. He took a last forlorn look at the apartment, cursed under his breath, and headed down the street, hoping to find a small hotel or at least an all-night club where he could sit down and have something to drink to kill the few hours remaining before dawn. As he walked, he flipped open the phone and re-dialed Ripley.

“Yes?”

“It’s Jones. I think our guy has done a runner. Can’t be certain, but I got as close as I could unarmed, doesn’t look like he was in the apartment to me. Any chance you took him at your hotel?”

“No, I don’t think so. I hate to lose this guy. What do you want to do?”

“I’ll find a place to hang out for a couple of hours, maybe catch a nap, drop back by the apartment about seven to see if I see him either leave or return.”

“Good,” Ripley said after a brief pause. “I’m sending Allen back to you with a present that should make your next visit more fruitful. He’ll come in a taxi, here’s an address,” and he read off the name and address of the Kabob restaurant he’d gotten from Salah two hours ago. “Allen will meet you there, probably take him an hour, maybe a little more.”

“Right, see him then,” Jones finished, closing the phone. XIV. Southern Paris

Colonel Cameron fell onto the bed at the hotel, dead tired and convinced that finally he’d break his jet lag routine. He closed his eyes, lusting for instant sleep, but it wouldn’t come. He struggled to get comfortable, squirmed about on the bed, threw off the covers completely for a few minutes, then gathered them up again and piled them on. Nothing. After thirty minutes he rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling through the semi-dark of the room.

Fahd and family had done well, moving quickly and light, leaving a small fortune in luggage and clothes behind. Mohammed had not been the problem he’d expected, but Fahd had given a cautioning look and a cock of his head. The boy seemed cowed, maybe even repentant, but something was smoldering there. Fadia was frazzled, frightened, and very talkative, but he’d not had enough Arabic to keep up.

They’d taken the metro well south, almost to Orly Airport, far from the tourist districts of Paris where he hoped he would be well clear for the night from both the people hunting Fahd and the French police that would soon be very active indeed. Ripley’s plan would make sure of that. He needed to be well away, he hoped this was far enough for tonight.

He looked at the bedside clock—a nod to American custom, this was a Holiday Inn—it was just after three a.m. Whatever was going to happen should already have gone down, unless he was way off the mark. The cell phone was there, but it remained silent. He turned back to the ceiling and alternated between that and the window, the lights of Paris far to the north beyond.

The plan for now was to get up in the morning, work the internet or a travel agent they hoped to find in this general neighborhood, buy airline tickets and leave France, tomorrow if it was possible but certainly by the day after. Whatever time they had to kill would be spent shopping. He had his own bag, recovered from his first hotel, but the family had only light carry-on bags. In any case, they would take tickets to just about anywhere they could get that was outside of France, and they’d work on the onward journey back to Saudi Arabia from wherever that ended up being, maybe England, maybe somewhere else on the continent.

The next thing he knew Cameron was swimming up out of deep sleep, the noise of the alarm clock loud in his ears. He swatted at it to turn it off, cursing to himself that it could not be time yet. The thing kept going. His mind began to work, and he realized it was not the clock, but the phone ringing, and he fumbled with it, finally answering with “Hello?”

“Colonel, it’s Ripley. I assume you’re all secure for the time being?”

Still groggy, he was slow to reply, then said, “Yeah, yes, we’re OK. How did it go on your end?”

“It went fine, but we made a bit of a mess as you would put it. Some bad guys are out of the game for good at any rate. That’s the good news. Two bits of bad news, however. One, Smith did not locate the big man up north, he may have smelled us somehow and skipped town. If so, he’s a very smart guy and that worries me. Anyway, two, a more immediate problem. Who paid for the hotel rooms that your General was in?”

“I did, with one of the Company credit cards.”

“I was afraid of that. You’re blown, Colonel. French police were all over the hotel within a few minutes after we, err, left it, and our Comm guys say there’s a watch out all over town, looking for you. We’re going to have to do something clever to get you out of France.”

“Great, fabulous,” Cameron moaned, finally fully awake but wishing he wasn’t. The spy shit was starting to get very, very old.

“Hey, Colonel,” Ripley threw in. “Not to worry. You probably never wanted to come to Europe on vacation again anyway, right?” He was chuckling through the line.

“Not funny, Ripley, not funny at all. Mrs. Cameron loves Europe, and if I’m blown that bad, I’m going to send her your way for satisfaction, and God help you my boy.”

“Amen, sir,” Ripley was laughing aloud now. “Listen, we can fix this, right now task one is to get you out of France. They don’t have a picture or a description, at least not yet, so for now what you need is a new passport, different name, money, new cards, all the trimmings. Happily, I work at the US Embassy and such things are relatively easy to come by. Where are you?”

Cameron gave the address off the small hotel notepad next to the phone, which drew a whistle from Ripley on the other end. “Long way out. OK, you stay put, don’t spend anything but cash for the time being and better still, stay in the hotel. I’ll take care of the Embassy end and meet you there in about, oh, say three hours, say six o’clock?”

“Make it seven Patrick, I need the sleep,” Cameron ordered.

“Sorry, not this time, Colonel. New passport and cards are good for some period of time, but I think our little caper tonight is going to be the crime of the decade for Paris, and if the guy that eyeballed you and who followed my associate into town this evening is anybody at all, he’ll have a photo, description, and all kinds of other info about you pretty soon. Six o’clock, ready to move, or I can’t answer for you staying a free man. Trust me on that, and I don’t want to answer to the DDO if you land in a French prison. He’d have my family jewels himself I’m afraid.”

Cameron thought about that for a few seconds and surrendered. “Fine, see you at six then. I guess I should have the whole crowd moving?”

“You better. I assume the General was registered under his own name as well?”

“Yeah, he