*****
Colonel Cameron dropped his own phone into his pocket and walked a block West, turning North as he emerged from the alley on a quiet street lined with trendy shops and cafés, an obvious tourist haunt. He approached a car parked in front of a rather large patisserie, not yet open, and got in the passenger side.
“Sabah ilkhair, ya Majid,” he said in Arabic as the driver opened his eyes.
“Sabah innur, ya aquid Paul, “ “good morning to you, Colonel Paul”, he answered unconsciously. He rubbed his eyes sleepily, then turned to look into the back seat. Mohammed and Miriam al-Auda slept there still. Majid shifted his gaze through the rear window to the car behind them, also parked next to the curb. He could just see his cousin Fahd through the windshield, also asleep. He knew Fadia and the boy would be in the back.
“So, my new friend, what do you plan to do with these poor people now, God be with them?” he asked.
“We wait for now,” Cameron said without looking, instead scanning the street ahead and to both sides, alternating in the two side view mirrors to check behind them. “And we get off the street as soon as we can. This café,” he pointed, “should open at seven, that’s just another ten minutes. Until then we wait as quiet as can be.”
“Then I shall try to sleep for the ten minutes while you watch, Colonel. It has been a tiring night for me.”
“A good idea my friend,” and he glanced as the Saudi slouched down behind the wheel and closed his eyes.
Calling the commercial attaché at the Saudi Embassy had been Fahd’s idea, and a good one. Majid was soft, not quick, and very Saudi in terms of any sense of urgency, but Cameron liked him already. He had come quickly, brought the cars, and moved them skillfully. Indeed, in many ways he was not typical at all.
Laying that aside for the moment, he considered the last few hours. He’d dozed only briefly after Ripley’s call at three o’clock, a typical third night in Europe for him, but he was so tired even the brief twenty minutes or so that he’d been asleep had brought everything clear to him in an instant. They had to move. The pieces were just too easy to put together. His credit cards were all over town, probably photos from his passport taken by copier at each of the hotel desks when he’d checked in. The French were on their own turf, and they would be looking for someone to pin the shootings on quickly—Paris depended on stability for the tourism business, and without that, business would grind to a halt. No, the Paris police and probably the FNP would be all over this, pulling out the stops, grinding out information. He’d used one of Fahd’s cards to register at the Holiday Inn, but they would have his information from the hotel Agora, too, and it was only a matter of time.
So, at four-thirty he’d called Fahd and told him the bad news—they had to move again, but this time they needed something besides the Metro. The family was up and getting ready instantly, but it took them some minutes of brainstorming before Fahd suggested his cousin. It was perfect. But, it did take some time. Majid arrived at the hotel at five-thirty, an hour after he’d decided they needed to run, and he’d been expecting the police to roll up in force for over half an hour when Majid arrived with the car, and another driven by a long-time family servant. The latter he dismissed with a hundred-Euro note, to take a taxi back home when he could find one. They were loaded and gone at twenty-five minutes to six, and only then did he relax.
The next move had been his idea, but it depended on how quickly Ripley’s people could produce the necessary paperwork. All his own papers were too dangerous to use at this point, and whatever Ripley brought him would all have to match, of course—the names, birthdates, all of it. Fahd and family could not get new documents so easily, even with Majid, and they didn’t have time to lurk around Paris for half the day waiting for the Saudi consular people to get it done. So the major airports, international flights, the TGV and the Chunnel train, they were all definitely out of bounds. But it was past time to quit France, past time to move on to Saudi Arabia to start sewing up the rest of this mess, before they all ended up in jail trying to explain the carnage in Fahd’s hotel room.
His eye detected movement in the right-side mirror, but Cameron’s quickening reflexes identified the walker as a café employee, probably headed right here to open up. Majid was snoring quietly. It was just before seven.
The walker stopped at the front door of the café, fumbling with a set of keys in the lock. Cameron opened his door and got out. “Good morning,” he said to the young man in English. And then in Spanish the same, adding “are you opening now”?
“Oui, monsieur, I am,” he switched to English. “Will you be joining us for breakfast?”
“Yes, yes we will. We’ve just driven all night from Monaco, you see.” Cameron affected a conspiratorial tone, and winked at the clerk. “I work for these wealthy Lebanese people,” he gestured at the two cars, “security. I’ll just wake them up and we’ll be in right behind you, OK? I hope you make good coffee and omelets.”
“Sir, my coffee is the best in France. For the moment I can offer you toasted baguettes, but Michele will be here very soon, and her omelets, mon Dieu, monsieur, they are for angels."
“Well, I’ll look forward to it, thanks.” The clerk entered the café, and Cameron went and tapped on Fahd’s window.
It took Fadia and Miriam another six minutes to straighten themselves up, six minutes during which the street traffic picked up fast, causing Cameron no small amount of worry. He didn’t know how far his picture might have circulated by now, and he didn’t like this exposed position. Finally they were all bundled inside, and he coaxed the coffee barista into placing a screen in front of the tables, shielding them all quite well from the street-side windows and the door. All in the name of “security”, with another wink. In another couple of minutes everyone had coffee and a buttered baguette on the table, the women were prattling on in rapid Arabic, Mohammed sulked and sipped his coffee. Little Aziz played with his bread and drank orange juice. Fahd and Majid looked dazed and stared at their cups. Cameron was wide awake, carefully scanning the increasing flow of early breakfast clients entering the shop, enjoying what just might be the very best cup of coffee he’d ever had in his life.