Moving at more than 120 kilometers per hour, they flashed past several darkened neighborhoods where flames danced skyward, licking red and orange against the black night. Dilapidated apartment blocks were on fire there, casting a flickering glow across the neighboring buildings. Near those areas, rolls of barbed wire and hurriedly deployed concrete barriers blocked all entrance and exit ramps off the motorway. Each checkpoint
was manned by heavy concentrations of police and soldiers in full combat gear. Armored cars fitted with tear-gas grenade launchers and machine guns, tracked personnel carriers, and even fifty-ton Leclerc main battle tanks were parked at strategic points along the route.
“Les Arabes!” The taxi driver sniffed contemptuously, stubbing his cigarette out in an overflowing ashtray. He shrugged his narrow shoulders. “They are rioting against what happened in La Courneuve. Burning down their own homes and shops — as usual. Bah!”
He paused to light another unfiltered cigarette with both hands, using his knees to steer the heavy German-made sedan. “They are idiots. Nobody much cares what happens inside those rats' nests. But let them put one foot outside and ppffft.” He drew a line across his throat. “Then the machine guns will begin talking, eh?”
Smith nodded silently. It was no real secret that the overcrowded and crime-ridden housing projects outside Paris had been carefully designed so that they could be swiftly and easily sealed off in the event of serious unrest.
The Mercedes turned off the Al and onto the boulevard Peripherique, swinging south and east around the crowded city's maze of alleys, streets, avenues, and boulevards. Still grumbling about the stupidity of a government that taxed him to pay welfare to thugs, thieves, and “les Arabes,” the taxi driver abandoned this ring road at the Porte de Vincennes. The cab plunged west, circled the Place de la Nation, roared along the rue du Fauborg-St. Antoine, screeched around the Place de la Bastille, and then threaded its way deeper into the narrow one-way streets of the Marais District, in the city's Third Arrondissement.
Once a swamp, this part of Paris was one of the few untouched by the grandiose nineteenth-century demolition and reconstruction projects carried out by Baron Hausmann at the orders of the emperor Napoleon III. Many of its buildings dated back to the Middle Ages. Seedy and run-down in the mid-twentieth century, the Marais had experienced a rebirth. It was now one of the city's most popular residential, tourist, and shopping areas. Elegant stone mansions, museums, and libraries sat beside trendy bars, antique shops, and fashion-conscious clothing salons.
With a final flourish of his tobacco-stained hands, the driver pulled up outside the front door of the Hotel des Chevaliers — a small boutique hotel scarcely a block from the ancient tree-lined elegance of the Place des Vosges. “We arrive, m'sieurl And in record time!” he announced. He grinned sourly. “Perhaps we should thank the rioters, eh? Because I think the flics,” he used the French slang word for policemen, “are too busy cracking their heads to hand out traffic tickets to honest men like me!”
“Maybe so,” Smith agreed, secretly relieved to arrive in one piece. He shoved a handful of euros at the cabdriver, grabbed his small carry-on bag and the travel kit he had picked up before boarding his flight at Dulles, and scrambled out onto the pavement. The Mercedes roared away into the night almost the second he closed the passenger door.
Smith stood quietly for a moment, savoring the restored silence and stillness of the damp street. It had rained here not long ago, and the cool night air carried a clean, crisp scent that was refreshing. He stretched limbs that had grown stiff in a cramped airline seat, then breathed deeply a few times to clear the lingering secondhand traces of the cabdriver's harsh tobacco out of his lungs. Feeling better and more awake, he slung his luggage over his shoulder and turned to the hotel. There was a light on over the door, and the night clerk — alerted by an earlier phone call from the airport to expect him — buzzed him in without trouble.
“Welcome to Paris, Dr. Smith,” the clerk said smoothly, in clear, fluent English. “You will be staying with us long?”
“A few days, perhaps,” Jon said carefully. “Can you accommodate me that long?”
The night clerk, a neatly attired middle-aged man alert despite the early hour, sighed. “In good times, no.” He shrugged his shoulders expressively. “But, alas, this unpleasantness at La Courneuve has caused many cancellations and early departures. So it will be no problem.”
Smith signed the register, automatically checking the names above his for anything suspicious. He saw nothing there to worry him. There were only a few other guests, almost all of them from other European countries or from France itself. Most, like him, seemed to be traveling alone. They were either here on urgent business or else scholars delving into the various nearby historical archives and museums, he judged. Couples bent on romance would have been among the first to abandon Paris in the wake of the nanophage attack and the ensuing riots.
The clerk brought out a small square cardboard box and laid it on top of the desk. “Also, this package came by courier for you an hour ago.” He glanced down at the note on top. “It is from the MacLean Medical Group in Toronto, Canada. You were expecting it, I think?”
Smith nodded, smiling inwardly. Trust Fred Klein to be on the ball, he thought gratefully. MacLean was one of the many shell companies Covert-One used for clandestine shipments to its agents around the world.
Upstairs in the privacy of his small but elegantly furnished room, he broke open the seals on the box and ripped through the packing tape. Inside he found a hard plastic case containing a brand-new 9mm SIG-Sauer pistol, a box of ammunition, and three spare magazines. A leather shoulder holster came wrapped separately.
Smith sat down on the comfortable double bed, stripped the pistol down to its constituent parts, carefully cleaned each component, and then put them back together. Satisfied, he snapped in a loaded magazine and slid the SIG-Sauer into the shoulder holster. He went to the window, which looked out onto the tiny courtyard behind the hotel. Above the dark slate rooftops of the ancient buildings on the other side, the eastern sky was touched by the first faint hint of gray. Lights were beginning to flick on behind some of the other windows facing the little cobblestone enclosure. The city was waking up.
He punched in Klein's number on his cell phone and reported his safe arrival in Paris. “Any new developments?” he asked.
“Nothing here,” the head of Covert-One told him. “But it appears that the CIA team in Paris has traced one of the vehicles it spotted in La Courneuve to an address not far from where you are now.”
Smith heard the uncertainty in Klein's voice. “It appears?” he said, surprised.
“They're being very coy,” the other man explained. “The team's most recent signal to Langley claimed preliminary success but omitted any specific location.”
Smith frowned. “That's odd.”
“Yes,” Klein said flatly. “It is very odd. And I don't have a satisfactory explanation for the omission.”
“Isn't Langley pressing the Paris Station for specifics?”
Klein snorted. “The head of the CIA and his top people are far too busy running emergency audits of the whole Operations Directorate to pay much attention to their officers in the field.”
“So what makes you think this surveillance team is zeroing in on a building in or around the Marais?” Jon asked.
“Because they've set their primary RV in the Place des Vosges,” Klein said.
Smith nodded to himself, understanding the other man's reasoning. The RV — or rendezvous point — for a covert surveillance team operating inside a city was almost always set up within easy walking distance of its intended target. It was usually a fairly public place, one busy enough to camouflage discreet meetings between agents as they exchanged information or relayed new orders. The Place des Vosges, built in 1605, was the oldest square in Paris and was perfect for this purpose. The bustling restaurants, cafes, and shops lining its four sides would provide ideal cover.
“Makes sense,” he agreed. “But knowing that doesn't do me much, good, does it? They could be snooping around any one of several hundred buildings in this neighborhood.”
“It's a problem,” Klein agreed. “Which is why you're going to have to make direct contact with the CIA team.”
Smith raised an eyebrow in amazement. “Oh? And just how do you suggest I go about doing that?” he asked. “Parade up and down the Place des Vosges waving a big sign asking for a meeting?”
“Something rather like that, actually,” Klein said drily.
With growing surprise and amusement, Smith listened to the other man explain what he meant. When they were through, Smith disconnected and entered another number.
“Delights of Paris, LLC,” a rich, resonant English voice answered. “No service too small. No bed left unmade.
