*****
At Paris West hospital Ahmed Kisani was making ready to leave. His head still hurt, and he looked like he’d been run over by a truck. A long, ugly bruise purpled the left side of his head and his left ear where he’d been hit with something last night. He was thankful the lights had gone out when the blow came; up to then they’d been punching his abdomen with such ferocity he thought the pain would kill him. How he’d ended up here he had no idea, but he was determined to go to the mosque for midday prayers today if he could just get moving and get out of this place.
Transportation, however, was going to be a problem. His wallet was gone, with them his transport pass for this month, all his cash, credit cards, everything. “Curse the French and all Spaniards,” he spat into the Spartan silence of his hospital room. His ribs ached despite the tight bandages around his middle, and the prospect of walking all the way back to the BatoBus stop to retrieve his scooter was unthinkable. He could not even bend over to tie his own shoes.
He sat there, miserable and helpless, waiting. In a few moments the door opened and a lively middle-aged nurse entered the room. She saw his plight immediately, and stooped to tie the shoes. Ahmed thanked her profusely. Painfully, he stood up, and she helped him on with his coat, which was dirty from his time on the alley floor, frayed at one point on the lower hem where he must have been scuffed about on the ground. He was embarrassed by the coat. Now, however, he was ready, and the nurse led the way out through the door with Ahmed right behind, walking delicately.
Had he not been so slow he would have missed the phone, but it rang when he was no more than two steps down the hall with the door still slowly swinging shut behind him. He stopped and debated for a moment, and then turned back. “Perhaps it is Ibrahim,” he said to himself. In the room he answered the phone, “Yes?”
“Ahmed, brother, it is Ibrahim. Do you need any help getting home? I need you here quickly.”
“Ah, Ibrahim,” Kisani sighed, relieved. “In truth, brother, I have no money for a taxi or anything else, and I cannot walk very far. Can you help?”
“I do not know, but perhaps. Can you get me the number for someone there, perhaps they will advance you some cash on one of my credit cards.”
This took twenty minutes to arrange. Ahmed first had to retrieve his nurse, and to ascertain what telephone number might suffice for such a transaction. The nurse had not known, and it took her five minutes just to get to her station and find the number. Meanwhile, Ibrahim held the line, Ahmed sat heavily on the bed trying to ease his pain. In the end, Ahmed had twenty euros in his otherwise empty pockets as he stood at the administration window signing documents that would allow the hospital to send the bills for his treatment to his home address.
Out on the street, half a block from the hospital entrance, Patrick Ripley sat at a café trying to slow his breathing. He’d run three blocks from the metro stop to get here, stopping only briefly at an ATM to withdraw cash on his VISA card. He sipped the iced mineral water and focused on breathing deeply through his nose, then slowly out his mouth, uttering a barely audible “aaaaahhhhhhhh” sound with each exhalation, the out rush of air incredibly long and controlled. His heart began to slow almost immediately, the perspiration that had started on his brow quickly ceased. He returned, he thought, “to a centered, harmonious state.”
The mobile phone vibrated on his belt. He opened it and spoke, “Yes?”
“Hello, identify.” It was the usual deadpan voice.
“Viper,” he replied.
“There has been another call at your number, incoming this time, from a mobile phone. Here is the number.” The voice read it, Ripley fumbled for his notebook and pen, and wrote it down. “The phone is in North Paris, a couple of blocks away from the landline from the earlier call. Here’s that address.” Again Ripley wrote without speaking. “Do you want to hear the call?” the voice asked.
“Not if it’s anything but French or English,” Ripley said, then added a moment later, reconsidering: “How long ago?”
“Five minutes ago, it was a long call, nearly ten minutes.”
“Play it.” Ripley breathed deep again, and listened. They were the same two Arabic voices, one obviously Kisani, the other the strong, fluid voice he’d heard earlier this morning. “Ibrahim. Got you, my friend,” he smiled to himself. It was looking like turning into a very good day.
“That’s enough,” he said after two minutes of the tape. “Do you have the translation of the earlier call?”
“Yes.”
“Read it.” And the voice did. There was nothing interesting, really: concern for Kisani’s health, a few questions about the circumstances of the attack. Ripley remembered the other voice sounding concerned when he’d heard it in Arabic only an hour and a quarter ago. “Suspicious, maybe?” There were instructions to meet at a café, but no address, obviously it was a place they knew well, not even a name. No help. “The suspicions, though?” He wondered. In his mind, he replayed the more recent call, the one he’d just heard from the cell phone. “No, there was no suspicion in the voice there. Concern, help for a friend. Good, they think it’s a random mugging, no more. And why would they think otherwise? This guy Jones is running, he’s something else.”
“Anything else?” the voice asked.
“Yes,” Ripley replied. “I need the translation at Paris station today. Tap the mobile phone, send the log to Paris along with the rest.” He had another thought. “Call me right away if the guy makes any international calls.”
“Done,” said the voice, and the line went dead.
Ripley snapped the flip-phone shut and replaced it in his holster. His breathing was back to normal now, and he drank deeply from the bottle of water. He caught the dark-haired waitress’s eye and ordered some breakfast.
Twenty minutes later he nearly choked on a slice of bacon when Kisani limped out of the hospital door, and he’d just started on the breakfast. He motioned to the waitress again for the check, regretting the loss of the rest of breakfast, but then he relaxed a little. Kisani was limping slowly straight toward him; he would not have to hurry all that much. The little man had half a block to cover before he’d pass, and it was clear he was making for the Metro station another three blocks away, for he had not hailed a taxi. He tucked the napkin back onto his lap and continued to eat, but a little faster.
In the light of day Kisani looked ghastly as he walked by within ten feet of Ripley’s table. He had a black eye on the right side, and that huge bruise on the left ear. The broken rib was causing him the most distress, however. Ripley’s keen ears heard the labored breathing as he passed. “Bad shape,” he thought, feeling a little sorry for the Moroccan. “But then, you have to know the rules if you’re gonna play this game, pal. Jonesey’s guy just showed you what it costs to play with the big boys.” He laid enough euros on the table to cover the bill and a nice tip, the latter he hoped the dark-haired girl might remember, as he thought he might stop by here again soon to see if he could pick her up. Right now there was obviously no time. “Story of my life.” He smiled broadly at the girl, though, and she smiled back, which made him feel a little warm. He walked nonchalantly out of the café and followed Ahmed to the Metro station.
Kisani either knew no tradecraft or was just too sore to care. He walked straight to the station and descended the escalator without so much as a look around after he’d bought his ticket. On the eastbound RER platform, Ripley stood against the tiled wall with the other passengers waiting for the train, but about a car’s length away from Kisani. A tail job on the metro could be tricky. If his luck was good, the target would get on through the rear door of one car, and he would get on the following car through its front door. He would be close enough to monitor the target, but it was much harder to get caught that way, particularly if there wasn’t much traffic. That wouldn’t be a problem so much today, traffic was heavy. As it happened he boarded in the
car behind Kisani, who found a forward-facing seat and never once looked around at anything or anyone.
Ripley assumed the train trip would take them all the way to the northern suburbs, which he’d taken to thinking of as “little Arabia” since this whole show began last night He therefore expected a change to the RER-B line at the St. Michel station. He was surprised when Kisani got up at the Invalides station and made to leave the train. Ripley took care to be last to leave the car, but kept an eye on his prey, taking up station perhaps fifty meters behind him. They ascended to the street, where Ahmed first crossed the Ave. D’Orsay and walked onto the Pont Alexandre III, the most ornamented bridge across the Seine. Halfway across Ripley stopped to pretend to take a picture of the boats on the river, using his mobile phone as simulated camera, to make himself look inconspicuous and to give Kisani the chance to open the distance. He was just “photographing” the last of the gilded sculptures atop the columns at each end of the bridge when the Moroccan turned right on the north side of the bridge and headed East. Ripley stowed his phone with a last look around, now nearly two hundred meters behind, but that would be no problem. Kisani was moving so slowly he’d be caught up in a few minutes and would have to work out another excuse for delay.
As he turned right at the end of the bridge the seasoned CIA agent and former Ranger was horrified to see Kisani strapping on a helmet and then boarding a scooter. The bike growled to life with a tweak of an electric starter, and Kisani moved quickly out into traffic. Ripley looked to his left and began flailing his arms at the passing cars, trying desperately to hail a taxi, looking intermittently right to see where Kisani was. It was no good. There was no taxi, and in thirty seconds Kisani had mixed with the frantic flow of vehicles in the roundabout at the Place de la Concorde a quarter mile East, and he was gone. Ripley looked at his watch; it was just after eleven. More than a little disappointed, he crossed the street and walked North toward the US Embassy, a little comforted in the knowledge that there was a treasure-trove of information waiting in his office there, and that Langley would be waking up in about an hour. There were other ways to find Ahmed Kisani, starting with the address on his driver’s license, and with him the man with the liquid voice.