He opened the window and stuck out his head despite the cold. The night concealed him. The loneliness and silence on Avenue Elisée Reclus calmed him. His illness wasn’t on his mind. For now it didn’t bother him, although he had already been hit by a ferocious attack, with agonizing stomach pains, vomiting and hallucinations, which had kept him in bed for a few days. Even more than the fact that he had inherited it from his father, it upset him that the porphyria was stealing time away from him. Eventually, it would steal his sanity. Would it also steal his intelligence, his most prized gift?
He turned back to the street. On this corner of the Septième Arrondissement, formed by the corner of Avenue Elisée Reclus and Rue Maréchal Harispe, a few yards from the Eiffel Tower, stood Eliah’s hôtel particulier, inherited from Jacques Méchin and which his brother Shariar’s construction company had remodeled and adapted at a cost of over two million dollars, with security and infrastructure technology fit for a CIA bunker. It was a solid three-story building from the end of the nineteenth century built in a style that, although it clearly demonstrated its classical origins—a compact sober look, slate roofs, a surrounding garden—also had elements of a more eclectic architecture: a combination of limestone and exposed brick, pointed arches in the windows, and the balcony at the center of the facade, which had a Moorish air. The bars across the balconies and doors, shaped like climbing plant stems with flowers and leaves, indicated the influence of the Belgian architect Victor Horta.
He thought that Avenue Elisée Reclus, with its mansions and decorated sidewalks, was the most exquisite part of Paris. Sometimes he missed it, though without Berta, it lost its charm. After the cremation and setting her affairs in order, it hadn’t been difficult for him to leave the area. He enjoyed his nomadic life. The idea that someday he might have been to every country in the world excited him, excepting Israel, of course, where he would never set foot. Gérard and Shiloah Moses, his father and brother, lived there. How he loathed bearing the accursed name that had plunged him into this miserable state! How he loathed his father’s surname! Such awful blood ran in his veins! He hated them just as intensely as he had loved Berta and as he still loved Eliah Al-Saud.
Characteristically silent, Udo, his chauffeur and right-hand man, a ferocious-looking man from Berlin, handed him a block of gianduia chocolate. He took it without saying anything either and nibbled at it. His strain of porphyria required constant feeding, so he ate something every two hours to avoid the attacks.
“What time is it, Udo?” he asked.
“Almost nine, sir.” Udo’s metallic, artificial voice mingled with Jarre’s synthesizers as if it were part of the composition. That was the reason the Berlin thug venerated his boss and would have done anything for him, not only because had he saved his life that night when he had been shot in the neck by gunmen sent by the notorious terrorist Abu Nidal, but because he had also restored his voice with an electronic device of his own invention, implanted by surgeons in Baghdad, all at his expense, of course.
“Here he comes, sir.”
The Aston Martin’s unmistakable headlights sliced through the darkness on Avenue Elisée Reclus just as Équinoxe’s fifth movement roared out of the speakers. His heart beat faster. The effect was purely cinematic. The music echoed his emotional state; it embodied Eliah: thunder, vigor, rain, freshness, speed, coordination, health and beauty.
The tinted windows blocked Eliah from view. Was he or Medes driving? Was he alone or with a woman? No, he thought, he doesn’t bring women to this house. It’s his refuge, his sanctuary. Fortunately, he parked on the sidewalk instead of the garage. The corners of his mouth quivered when the English sports car had drawn up to the curb. Finally, he would see him. He took his pulse. It was dangerous for it to rise above eighty. Ninety-two. He forced himself to breathe deeply.
Medes got out first, circled the car, walked toward the house and positioned himself a few steps from the service entrance, a smaller replica of the main door—with an overhanging glass arch that was certainly bulletproof, and further protected by an intricate black forged-iron grille. Then Eliah got out, on the road side. It wouldn’t take him long to notice the only car parked nearby. He smiled as his assumption was proved to be true: Eliah turned and stared at the barely defined silhouette of the solitary vehicle. They gazed at each other across the space and tinted glass. Eliah didn’t know it, but an electric current ran between their two sets of eyes, making him feel alive.
Without looking away, Al-Saud tapped the Aston Martin’s roof twice and the passenger door nearest the sidewalk opened. Who would get out? He sat up in his seat. The sight hit him like a slap in the face: Shiloah Moses, his brother. The shock left him breathless.
“Let’s go, Udo! Drive!”
As they passed by the Aston Martin, he could see that Eliah had taken out a pistol and, though he was pointing it at the concrete, his posture indicated his readiness to shoot at the windows of this suspicious vehicle.
“Where are we heading, sir?”
“Take me to Anuar Al-Muzara’s man, Rani Dar Salem, at his place.”
They used the service entrance, which led them down a long hallway to the kitchen, where they heard young voices.
“Ah!” Shiloah exclaimed. “All the Huseinovic siblings at once!” He reached out his hand and Sándor, the middle brother, shook it firmly. He also greeted Diana, the eldest sister, though from afar with a wave and a smile. He knew better than to try to touch her. He also knew her real name, Mariyana, which she hated because it reminded her of the Serbian soldiers who had raped her for weeks in the Rogatica concentration camp. Now she made everyone address her with the name of the Roman goddess, famous for her chastity and aptitude for hunting. What will it be tonight, Mariyana, shall we fuck you or would you prefer to watch us do your sister, Leila? The Huseinovic sisters’ beauty made them the preferred targets of Milosevic’s soldiers. While Leila, the youngest at twenty-two, had taken refuge in a childlike world, Diana maintained her sanity so she could plan her vengeance. The depths of her gaze revealed the tormented darkness of someone teetering at the precipice of an abyss of pain and resentment.
Diana’s stormy countenance contrasted with that of her sister, who, when she saw Eliah enter the kitchen, yelped with happiness and ran over to hug him. Al-Saud kissed her on the top of her head and held her to his chest for a long moment as he exchanged words with Sanny and Diana. Leila lifted her face and looked at him, spellbound. Eliah Al-Saud was her knight in shining armor, her hero, her savior, the one who, along with a group of men dressed in black from head to toe, had entered the Rogatica concentration camp and pulled the Serbian soldier off her, executing him on the spot. Leila, in a state of shock, had stared at the man dressed in black as if he were a demonic monster and struggled to escape. Then Eliah had taken off his helmet and balaclava and hugged her. He’d whispered to her in faltering Bosnian, “Calm down, you’re safe.” Dingo, an ex-soldier from the elite forces of the Australian army, took care of the one who was raping Mariyana while the rest of the commando group eliminated the officials in charge of the camp.
Disobeying orders from his superiors at L’Agence, Eliah and his team had gone back to Srebrenica, a city where, days before, the Serbian army had massacred eight thousand Bosnian Muslims. Al-Saud had been unable to resist Mariyana’s pleas to rescue the rest of her family. Leila was refusing to speak and seemed on the verge of a breakdown. In Srebrenica they found that the Huseinovic restaurant had been destroyed and their parents murdered. Where was Sándor, their only brother? While the men in black dug two holes to bury Ezster and Ratko Huseinovic, the sisters wandered around the ruins that had been their parents’ pride and joy.
The groan came from the tiny basement, where they kept supplies. Eliah ordered two of his men to go down and look. They came back with a dirty, disheveled man, whose bewildered face spoke eloquently of the scenes he had witnessed. Leila spoke her first words in days: “Sanny, my brother!” and flung herself at him. The young man was
too weak to hug Leila back. The soldiers carried him outside so he could breathe the fresh air. They propped him up on a backpack. The paramedic in the group said he was dehydrated and immediately set up an IV drip to rehydrate him.
Sometimes, when he had all three of them together, as he did now in the kitchen in the house on Avenue Elisée Reclus, Al-Saud wondered why he had taken them under his wing. During the mission in Bosnia, they had seen thousands of abandoned people, orphans, wounded and rape victims; they had saved women and children, old and young. So why had he risked so much to save Sanny Huseinovic? What was so special about this family? Takumi sensei, who had taken the siblings in at the ranch in Rouen to try and restore some of what the Serbians had destroyed, suggested that an explanation for the magnetism that drew him to the Huseinovics might be found in a past life. “Maybe,” the wise Japanese man said, “their spirits and yours were linked in some intimate way in an earlier incarnation on the earth.”
The mission in Bosnia had other consequences, such as the beginning of his disassociation from L’Agence. Eliah’s insubordination—returning to Srebrenica when he should have flown on to Sarajevo—meant a month’s suspension and a blemish on his service record. He didn’t lose any sleep over the latter. What bothered him was the same old problem: having to follow orders, having a boss to report to, feeling his freedom curtailed, that his judgment ceased to matter as soon as he had nodded blindly at a superior’s order and, above all, carrying out missions without really knowing their real purpose. In Takumi’s opinion, the lack of freedom enraged the Horse of Fire; it didn’t cherish anything as much as being master of its own destiny. “Sooner or later, Eliah, you’ll take the reins of your life and you’ll become a master and a gentleman.”
Peter Ramsay and Alamán Al-Saud joined the group in the kitchen. A little later, Anthony Hill and Michael Thorton arrived too. The kitchen was full of voices, laughter and pleasant smells. Alamán’s friendly attitude contrasted with Eliah’s more serious demeanor. At first glance the two brothers looked similar, partly because they shared their family’s strong Arabic features. A closer look revealed subtle differences, such as the fact that Alamán’s lips were firmer, straighter and less fleshy, especially the top lip, that Eliah’s chin was stronger, his eyebrows were thicker and wider, and their eyes were different shades of green, Alamán’s were lighter, like jade, revived by a circle of blue around the iris. Almost the same height as his brother, Alamán had a solid, strapping build like an oak tree, with nothing of the elasticity that Eliah’s thin body exuded, and, if it hadn’t been for his smile and natural kindness, Alamán would have looked a little like an ogre.
Eliah was perched on the corner of the black marble island in the middle of the kitchen to drink a carrot and orange juice that Leila had made for him before dinner. He stood out in the scene as he sipped with a slowness that concealed the frenzied way in which his mind was jumping from one thing to another: the mission in Eritrea, the training for the new soldiers, the investigation into the Bijlmer disaster, the suspicious car from a few minutes earlier, the operation in Kabul, Shiloah’s convention in George V. Matilde. The thought slipped in as delicately as a dragonfly, but it speared him to the core. He finished the last sip of juice, stood up and left the kitchen, heading to the basement.
“Eliah.” Diana caught up with him in front of the armored door that led down into the bowels of the mansion.
“Yes,” he answered as he put his chin on a support so the scanner could read his irises. Various locks shifted and the door opened.
“I’ll go down with you.”
They entered a small chamber lined with aluminum panels that refracted the lights, filling the room with an almost disturbing brightness. Al-Saud put his hand in a receptacle on the wall and, after a violet ray swept his palm, the elevator door opened. He and Diana went down three floors.
“Medes told me I should guard a woman who lives in a building on Rue Toullier.”
“You’ll take turns.”
“Who is she?”
Al-Saud surveyed her beautiful face, with its Slavic features and pale skin, made all the more flawless by her coal-black hair and light-blue eyes. Like him, it was hard for Diana to take orders without an explanation. And, unlike the others, he allowed her these impertinences.
“She’s related to the investigation for the Dutch insurance agencies.”
The elevator doors opened into a room of almost a thousand square feet that would have dazzled a mere mortal. There, Mercure’s heart beat between walls so thick they kept out the probing of even the most powerful satellites. Though the suites in the George V were well equipped and protected with electronic countermeasures, they were just the facade of the business, to give it an air of normality. They met clients there, arranged meetings, dictated letters to secretaries, received calls and filled out legal and administrative paperwork. But the basement in the house on Avenue Elisée Reclus and the training fields in the D’Entrecasteaux Islands in Papua New Guinea, were the true soul of Mercure Inc.
In this spacious room, which they called “the base,” the lighting was designed to simulate daylight and a ventilation and heating system ensured ideal levels of temperature, humidity and pressure. Al-Saud had created a command center with the latest technology that allowed him to receive, send and analyze millions of bits of data per second through a secure fiber-optic web. The floor was occupied by tables set up in parallel lines, where operators, sitting in front of computers and wearing headset microphones, processed information or sent data to the groups assigned to foreign missions. The highly qualified employees, fluent in many languages and with extensive knowledge of computer systems, were paid sizable salaries in exchange for absolute discretion and complete availability. They’d work day and night to support missions the world over, such as, in this case, a commando group sent to the Colombian jungle to rescue a hostage from FARC.
There was an impressive map of the world on a fifteen-foot crystal sheet, illuminated in faded colors, and as many clocks as there were time zones on Earth. On the wall facing the desks there were around twenty TV screens tuned into the most important news channels and a Bloomberg terminal to consult stock prices and the stock market indexes: Dow Jones, Nasdaq, the London FTSE, the Parisian CAC 40, Tokyo’s Nikkei and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng, among others. Alamán Al-Saud, an electronics engineer and lover of technology, was charged with making sure all this cybernetic paraphernalia functioned well, and provided the business with the latest security and computer technology. Money was no obstacle as the partners gave him their full support, because a failure in communication or an information error could lead to the death of a team member. The other major technological figure at Mercure was named Claude Masséna, a computer genius with the face of a rodent. Eliah Al-Saud’s lawyers had had him released from prison, where he was serving a sentence for hacking into the Banque National de Paris’s system and stealing hundreds of thousands of francs.
Al-Saud and Diana made their way between the desks toward Masséna’s office. Eliah appreciated how organized the hacker was in spite of the chaos of papers, cables and apparatus. The man looked up from the screen and took off his antiglare glasses. Eliah regarded Masséna as an enigma that kept him on his toes. Though he looked like a bookworm, he had successfully stolen vast sums from one of Europe’s most important banks. He would never have been caught if Al-Saud hadn’t turned him in, in order to then keep him in his employ.
“Oh, Mr. Al-Saud! Good evening. Hello, Diana,” he said, with a smile, which was returned with an almost imperceptible nod.
“How’s it going, Masséna?” Eliah greeted him. “When will we be ready for the conference call with the commanders in the training field?” he said, referring to the training camp in Papua New Guinea.
“They just sent me a message saying that the system won’t let them start the conference call. It says the participant password doesn’t exist. I’m creating a new one. It’ll be ready in two minutes.”
??
?In the meantime,” said Al-Saud, “find out who this license plate belongs to.” He rattled it off from memory: “Four five four whiskey Josefina zero six.”
“Why are you asking about that license?” Diana wanted to know.
“It’s a car that was parked outside when we arrived. It left immediately. I don’t like it.”
“Did you see who was inside?”
“No. The windows were tinted.”
“Sir, I forgot,” Masséna said. “Vladimir”—Vladimir Chevrikov, the Russian forger—“sent a message. The passports for Dingo and Axel are ready. According to records from the Directorate of Territorial Surveillance,” Masséna continued, “that license belongs to a Rent-a-Car.”
“Can you get into the Rent-a-Car system and see who rented it?”
Masséna pushed his glasses back onto the bridge of his nose and gave him an eloquent look.
“Piece of cake, sir.”
Al-Saud looked back skeptically.
“You couldn’t hack the Blahetter Chemicals systems,” he reminded him.
“Boss, that was a special case! I explained to you that the technology they’re using to protect their system was something I had never seen before. I would give my right kidney to know how they did it.”
It’s Mossad technology, thought Al-Saud.
“Get me the info about that car.”
“I’ll have it ready as soon as possible.”
When the conference call was ready, Al-Saud went up to his office, located on a mezzanine that overlooked the main room. Peter, Tony and Mike joined him. They urgently needed to discuss several matters with the people responsible for training the mercenaries—many arrived in terrible condition after long periods of inactivity—and new recruits wanting to become freelance soldiers. Eliah didn’t like the outcome of the conversation: they required his presence in Papua New Guinea, among other matters, to approve some attack helicopters they’d just purchased. Traveling had never bothered him, especially when he could handle other business at the same time; it was in his nature to have more than one iron in the fire at any one time. Still, right now he wanted to stay in Paris.