Behind him came Gothwhiler, the scrawny extraterrestrial, pale as a ghost with hair dyed jet-black. He was older than Horatio, wore diamond earrings, and seemed to own only khaki cargo pants. Noboru had never seen him wear anything else in the ten months he worked for the man. Horatio and Gothwhiler were both Brits, former military men (they would not reveal more about that), and had founded a private military company, or PMC, called Gothos and headquartered in the United Kingdom.
Noboru rolled off the bed, started for the window, but Horatio was already crying out, "Don't do it, mate."
He hesitated, glanced back at the hard-eyed Brit.
"Just return the money," said Gothwhiler, lifting his own pistol.
"I took back what was mine. Nothing more."
"We don't care," snapped Horatio. "You're a very naive young man. And trust me. I know what it's like to play with fire. . . ."
Noboru had completed a two-part assassination job for the company, killing the CEO of a competing PMC headquartered in Hong Kong. Once he'd killed the old man, he'd been instructed to kill the man's wife and seventeen-year-old daughter, in order to make a "lasting impression" on the firm's remaining employees, whom Gothos wanted out of the mercenary business.
After assassinating the CEO, Noboru had spent a week studying his targets and realized that he couldn't bring himself to complete the job. He returned and asked for half of his two-hundred-thousand-dollar payment.
Because he had not "completed" the mission, Gothwhiler had refused to pay him anything. With the help of an old friend in the special forces, Noboru hacked the company's account and withdrew half his fee--only the half he believed they owed him.
Consequently, Horatio and Gothwhiler had made it their mission in life to find him, get back their money, and then, of course, make Noboru suffer a long and painful death.
Noboru had no intention of ever returning the money. He had already sent it to his parents in Yokohama, and they had already used it to save their house and get ahead on the bills. And if these two Brits were going to kill him, he'd force them to do it quickly, which was why, without a second's hesitation, he threw himself out the window. Horatio fired and Gothwhiler screamed for him not to, since only Noboru knew where the money was and could return it.
But Horatio was no amateur marksman, and his round had managed to catch Noboru in the right arm just as he'd been passing through the window.
He landed in the garbage below and immediately rolled down the bags and came up, as the first stinging from the gunshot wound took hold. He rose, raced to the brick wall, and glanced down at his bleeding arm.
Then he raced to the main entrance of the building, where he knew Horatio and Gothwhiler would emerge.
They had surprised him in his apartment. He only wanted to return the favor.
Gothwhiler came out first, and Noboru, in one fluid movement, took him from behind, wrapping an arm around his neck and seizing the man's wrist so he could direct his pistol toward . . .
Horatio, forcing both men to hold their fire, if only for a few seconds. Noboru drove his knee into Gothwhiler's spine, and as the man groaned, he shoved him forward, into Horatio, who lost his footing and dropped back onto his rump.
Two old men on the opposite side of the street began shouting, and, in that instant, Noboru made a decision.
Run.
He bolted around a row of parked cars, and, using them as a shield, crouched over and reached the next cross street.
Now he was into a full sprint, weaving his way through the throng of pedestrians, stealing glimpses over his shoulder, feeling the blood dripping from his arm.
His heart was drumming in his ears, rapping hard, sounding strangely like a knuckle rapping on glass.
"What the hell is this, Bruce? Open up!"
Noboru shook awake, his arm throbbing as it had back then, and found himself staring directly into Mr. Louis Moreau's ugly mug and grateful there was a piece of glass between them.
Moreau stepped back from the car and waved him out.
"Maya, wake up. Our runner is here. I don't think you'll be happy."
HANSEN and Ames were about halfway to Boutin's apartment when Grim called, and he spoke to her via his SVT and subdermal. "Ben, I need to make this brief. There's been a slight change in how this operation will be coordinated. When your runner arrives, he'll explain everything. I'll be out of touch for a little while."
"Grim, wait. I have questions."
"I wish I could answer them. I really do. Suffice it to say that you need to focus on the job. Good luck, Ben."
"Wait."
She ended the call.
"She says there's been a change in plans, in how we'll coordinate."
"What does that mean?" asked Ames.
"The runner's supposed to tell us."
"WHAT is this?" asked Valentina, standing outside their car. She was furious that Moreau et al had lied to them about his whereabouts and probably more. "You were just talking to Kim on the computer, and she said you were back at Fort Meade."
"First, let's slow down, Nurse Ratched--and speaking of which, I've got your uniforms and IDs in the trunk."
"Nurse who?"
"I don't believe it. Are you going to stand there and tell me you have not seen One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest?"
Valentina frowned. "It's a movie?"
"Of course it is, sunshine!"
"I am not familiar with that movie, either," said Noboru.
"Aw, you boys and girls got to be kidding me. When you're drunk or bored sometime, Google it. For now, listen up."
Valentina snickered. "For the second time, why are you here?"
"I'm getting to that. You'll be coordinating directly with me right here in Reims, but we want them to think I'm at 3E headquarters."
"We want who to think?"
"Kovac."
"What're you talking about?"
"He's got his eyes and ears all over us. Grim and I decided that it was more important for me to work hands on this time around. So I brought you the gear and my shining personality, and I'll be staying right here while you track Fisher. You'll have a secure, encrypted link directly to me, and I'll update Grim. Bottom line: Tech operations has just gone mobile. Hallelujah!"
Moreau stood there a moment as Valentina and Noboru faced him, resigned to their fate.
"What's the matter, Nurse Ratched? You're not happy to see me?"
"Thrilled."
"Sir, I am glad to see you. I have been thinking about a nickname for you, and I wanted to share it."
"You're not going to use foul language, Bruce, are you?"
"No, sir. Have you seen the movie Pulp Fiction?"
"Of course I have."
"You are Jules Winnfield, sir. You are a black hit man, but you don't have the Jheri curls. When you retire, you will walk the earth like Caine in Kung Fu."
"You bet your ass I will." Moreau threw his arm over Noboru's shoulder. "Just don't call me Grasshopper. Now, come with me. I got all kinds of heavy gear bags for you to load while I supervise. Then we're going to dress you up nice and pretty like a nurse."
As they went to Moreau's car, a silver four-door Mercedes (leave it to him to rent a Mercedes), Valentina activated her OPSAT and opened the channel to Hansen. "Ben?"
"You make contact with the runner?"
"Unfortunately, we did."
"What's wrong?"
Valentina took a deep breath and told him.
16
CENTRE HOSPITALIER UNIVERSITAIRE REIMS, FRANCE
ROMAIN Doucet was sitting up in bed, his leg wrapped in a heavy cast and elevated by a sling. His face was a mottled mess of purple and yellow bruises, and somewhere amid those venous flowers was a pair of dark, narrow eyes. Valentina could only imagine how much swelling there had been, but some of it had subsided. Admittedly, it was unnerving to see a man this imposing as battered as he was; it suggested that his attacker was either bigger and stronger or a whole lot smarter. Valentina suspected the latter to b
e true. Indeed, Doucet was a giant of a Frenchman, over six feet, to be sure, with a chest like the front bumper of a pickup truck. You wouldn't call the things at the ends of his arms hands, but paws, and his pitch-black hair was matted as though he'd been rolling around on a thick carpet.
Behind Valentina, at a nurses' station walled in by glass, Noboru was presenting the four duty nurses with a stack of bogus paperwork he'd brought in from central administration. Noboru's English was very good, but his French was poor, which only added to the mayhem. The nurses were gaping at the reports, which included new work schedules for each of them, new sets of duties, and enough other incendiary material to keep them diverted for a week, let alone five minutes. The geeks back home must have had a good time composing those documents--geeks enjoy wielding their intellectual power to piss people off. Valentina ought to know--she was in their club and just needed to make other people realize that.
For now, though, she was back to the same old pathetic ploy: using sex as a weapon to get what the team needed. She undid one more button on her uniform, opened the glass door, and sashayed into Doucet's room.
Playing on the TV was a rerun of Magnum, P.I. with Tom Selleck. Magnum's lips were moving, his mustache fluttering, but French was coming out of his mouth in a rapid fire that made him at once appear feminine and ridiculous. Doucet glanced away from the screen and abruptly beamed at her. The pig liked what he saw. "You're a new one."
"That's right, Mr. Doucet. My name's Nurse Ratched."
In fact, that was the name Moreau had placed on her ID badge; he'd planned that from the beginning. Valentina reached around and drew the curtain around his bed . . . so they'd have privacy.
Doucet raised his brows. "What do we have to do now?"
"That's up to you, sweetheart." Valentina did her finger-to-the-lips thing that all the dogs loved.
The look in his eyes made her want to put a shotgun to his crotch and pull the trigger.
But she had work to do.
"You're not a real nurse."
"And I thought you were a stupid man."
"Who hired you?"
"They did. They want me to make you feel better."
He started to chuckle. "They're good friends." He stopped and winced through the pain.
"Oh, my poor baby. What happened to you?" She crossed around the bed and stared at his leg.
"Skiing accident."
"That's not what they told me." Valentina undid another button, leaned back, and showed him more of her cleavage.
He gasped and said, "What did they tell you?"
"Something about a very bad man who came to see you." She moved toward the bed, leaned down, undid the clip and let her long hair fall into his face.
He breathed in the scent and said, "I'm going to find him. And I'm going to kill him."
She pulled back. "You're not afraid?"
"No."
"You're a strong man. I wish we weren't here. I wish we were someplace else."
"Me, too."
"This man who did this to you . . . he must be so strong."
"No, he's just a smart bastard. Very smart."
"How're you going to find him?"
"I'm not sure."
"In my business, I know a lot of people on the street. Maybe I can help you. Is there a reward?"
"There could be. But are you going to keep talking or take off your clothes?"
Valentina smiled and undid the rest of the buttons on her uniform. She moved back toward the bed and pressed her cleavage into his face. Doucet groaned softly. She rolled her eyes. She pulled back once more and said, "What does this guy look like?"
"White guy. About six feet. Longish hair. Unshaven for a week. His French was excellent, but something tells me he's an American."
"That could be anyone. You'll never find him. Maybe a police artist could draw a picture for me."
"We're not using the police. I do this my way."
"Okay. I'm sorry to talk about this. I'm here to make you feel better."
"Then climb up on top of me, and take my pulse."
She grinned, and just as he reached out to grab her wrist, the curtain wrenched open, and in walked a gray- haired, potbellied nurse who took one look at Valentina's exposed black bra and screamed, "Who are you? Not another stripper on my floor! Get out! We've banned you people, you should know!"
Noboru was standing behind the woman, giving Valentina the high sign with his eyes.
She quickly folded her blouse closed and slipped past the nurse, dropping in behind Noboru. They raced to the end of the hall, turned right, and hit the stairwell.
"I'm sorry, Maya," Noboru said as they charged down. "One of the nurses saw you close the curtain. I tried to distract her."
"It's all right. I got what we need. It was definitely Fisher."
"He didn't touch you, did he?"
She gritted her teeth. "Don't worry about me."
They reached the ground floor, and Valentina took a few seconds to finish closing her blouse.
"I am worried about you," Noboru insisted.
"Why?"
"Because my life depends on you."
"All right, I guess that's a pretty good reason. Maybe . . ." She winked.
"That was kind of fun." Noboru looked at her, then smiled weakly.
"Keep working on that smile. It's still rusty."
They pushed through the heavy exit door and started across the parking lot. "Ben?" Valentina called after activating her OPSAT. "No surprise: Doucet got his ass kicked by Fisher. I just wish Fisher had finished the job. That guy is scum."
AS Hansen cruised down another impossibly narrow street, he told Valentina to meet them back at the hotel. He and Ames wanted to make one more pass by Boutin's apartment.
They had a couple of surveillance images of the man taken several years ago. Abelard Boutin was pushing sixty, and if you described him as being taller than five feet four, you were being generous. He squinted like a rodent through dark-rimmed glasses and attempted to cover his freckled and pockmarked skull with all of sixteen long, gray hairs in the classic comb-over style that fooled no one but has remained inexplicably popular for centuries. He was a gnome, a savant whose singular talent lay in the perfect artistry of his work.
And after all these years and all that work, the best he'd been able to afford was a basement apartment in Reims. Was he hoarding all the money? Helping to support someone? Or did he have certain . . . weaknesses . . . that siphoned off his income? These were interesting questions, but all Hansen needed to know was, first, had Fisher gone to see Boutin (as it seemed he had), and, second, did Boutin know where Fisher was headed.
Boutin's apartment was located just west of the center of Reims, on the corner of rue de Vesles and Marx Dormoy, behind a clothing store and several other storefronts. Hansen was glad they'd made a dry run, since there was no parking at all on rue de Vesles because of some road construction and repair. There were signs posted up and down the street, with red railings fencing off the torn-up cobblestones. The maps had not revealed that.
A tunnel-like alley called the passage Saint-Jacques lay between a small pharmacy and several ATM machines. A wrought-iron gate with a security touch pad secured the entrance to the tunnel, and that gate stood in sharp, contemporary relief against the passage's ornate stone arch, which made you feel as if you were walking through someplace very ancient and somehow sacred. Hansen and Ames had already decided that at least one, possibly two, of them would gain entrance to the courtyard beyond, either by hopping the gate or picking the lock. A second inspection revealed motion detectors, so those and the lock would have to be neutralized.
Hansen took them around the block one last time. Within the courtyard near Boutin's apartment was an old church, and behind it an ornate carousel ride with bright lights and gleaming horses. Once again more fences lay between them and the courtyard where Boutin's apartment was located, so entrance from the north would also require some climbing or lock picking. No big challenge.
Just a nuisance.
Ames finished taking his pictures and lowered the camera. "You see the ass on the girl back there?"
"No, I was too busy reconnoitering the target and considering our plans for tonight."
Ames shrugged. "You missed quite an ass."
"Where in the training manual for covert field operatives does it say that you need to be loud, the class clown, and the center of attention?"
"Dude, it's in the footnotes. You don't read the footnotes?"
Hansen snorted. "If you don't take this operation seriously--"
"Benjamin? Are you trying to seduce me?"
"Shut up! Listen to me. The quips are just irritating and they need to stop."
"Whatever you say."
"And leave the women alone. Maya will kick your ass, and I won't stop her."
"I'm just trying to have some fun. You people are so uptight. We could die out here because, yeah, maybe this whole thing's a setup. Maybe Grim's a traitor. Maybe we're being used, so we might as well have a little fun along the way--because you know what, Mr. Hansen? Life's too goddamned short. All it takes is one little spark, one little flame, and it's all burned away. . . ."
"You don't think I know about that?" Hansen asked, wishing he could fix Ames with a hard look but keeping his eyes on the road. "We're all spies here. You found out Gillespie slept with Fisher the same way I found out about your family dying in a fire, about that Zippo you carry around, about your little problem with anger management. I even read Fisher's report about you and your bad temperament."
Ames began shaking his head and laughing. "You really think you know me, huh? You really do!"
"You're about as uncomplicated as they come."
"All right. I'll accept that. Just a blue-collar kind of guy . . ."
Hansen stole a glance at the man and just sighed.