Chapter 58
At 7.15pm they called it quits. There was nothing, the house was empty. The backpack that Deif had when the Paris Head had followed him was there but nothing else. Other than a few clothes and a couple of books, nothing. The books had been scanned and x-rayed, no hidden compartments, no flash drives, nothing. No wonder he had smiled, he really had beaten them, thought Rebecca.
Sam came in from having checked the grounds, nothing. Deif had obviously gone there, safe in the knowledge that his plans were in motion and required no further action. Sam spotted the two books on the kitchen counter, one of which made him smile.
“Jesus, I loved these books. My uncle who lived in London used to send them over every year without fail, this and the… God, what was its name…”
“The Hotspur,” offered one of the Paris Mossad men.
“That was it, every year I’d get The Victor and Charles would get The Hotspur.”
Rebecca looked at Sam and the Mossad guy like they were mad, as they started to chat about a comic book from 1981 called The Victor.
After five minutes reminiscing, Sam pulled his thoughts back to the job in hand.
“I need to get to the airport,” he announced, hoping somebody would realize he needed a lift.
Rebecca cottoned on and asked the Paris Head for somebody to take Sam to Nice asap.
“I’ll come with you to the airport, I need a break from this place. I’ll call in on the way.”
As they made to leave, Sam’s fellow comic enthusiast tossed him the Victor. “It’s no use to us, something to read on the plane!” he offered.
“Thanks,” said Sam tucking it into his small back pack.
Squeezed back into the child’s seat, they made their way back to Nice. Rebecca called Ben and dropped the devastating news that Deif was a dead end. Ben had admitted the false tooth cyanide pill was very old hat and certainly not anything he had seen for a very long time.
“So what now?” he asked Rebecca.
“Don’t know, back to America I guess.”
Ben wasn’t sure. He was thinking her talents would be better used in Israel. Four nuclear weapons in Israel were far more effective than one in America.
Ben heard Sam speaking to the driver, the American accent catching his attention.
“Who was that?” he demanded angrily.
Shit, thought Rebecca, she hadn’t mentioned Sam’s assistance and didn’t think it was really relevant. It also didn’t help that a previous assignment was the assassination of Sam’s brother. She could not risk Sam overhearing the conversation. He claimed not to understand Hebrew but Rebecca claimed not to understand many languages.
“I’ll call you back.”
“Don’t han…”
Rebecca ended the call before Ben could finish telling her not to and asked the driver to pull over for two minutes.
“Ben, sorry, I couldn’t talk.”
“Who’s in the car?” he asked angrily. He wasn’t a man people hung up on.
“Sam Baker,” she replied and held the phone from her ear.
After waiting for the inevitable expletives to stop, she brought the phone back to her ear and explained what had happened.
“…it’s all to do with some guy Lawson, James Lawson,” she finally concluded.
Ben’s brain worked like a Cray II supercomputer. The speed at which he could compute scenarios and situations and almost instantaneously come to a conclusion was staggering. Almost as soon as Rebecca had spoken, Ben had a new strategy.
“Stay with Sam Baker, assist him with whatever he needs to get to Lawson. Just be careful as to who he incriminates, we have friends in the White House.”
“OK,” she replied, again surprising herself at just how relieved she felt at not having to say goodbye to Sam.
Jumping back in the car, she was pleased to see the smile in Sam’s eyes as she relayed the news that he was stuck with her, at least for a little while longer.
The flight to Paris left on time and during the flight, they discussed how they would proceed which, for Sam, was pretty much, get to Lawson’s room, extract the information and kill him. Rebecca suggested a little more finesse which Sam considered for some time before announcing his preference for the original plan.
One problem neither of them had considered as they stepped into a significantly colder autumn evening in Paris, was that they had left pretty much the whole Mossad team in the South of France. The only people that were left in Paris were young admin girls who most certainly would not have access or the wherewithal to acquire any weapons. Sam had not expected Rebecca’s assistance and had not even considered the possibility of going armed. He had a much better weapon in his arsenal, one that had fared him very well in the past — surprise. If they didn’t know he was coming, it really wasn’t an issue. Rebecca had been warned that Lawson went nowhere without at least four bodyguards. They would all be ex-military and almost certainly ex-special forces. Sam thought back to the sniper as she relayed this information and re-iterated his earlier point. They didn’t know they were coming and that was worth more than any weapons They’d ask questions then shoot. If they knew they were coming, they’d shoot and then ask questions. Simple military rules of engagement, particularly NATO forces, don’t fire unless fired upon.
As they made their way back to central Paris, Rebecca received a call. The Paris Head had tracked down Lawson’s location. The Presidential Suite, Hotel Barriere Fouquet.
“Do you know it, Sam?” asked Rebecca.
“Intimately, when in Paris I wouldn’t stay anywhere else,” he laughed.
Rebecca looked at him, trying to ascertain if he was being serious. Israelis didn’t do sarcasm well.
“Hotel Barriere Fouquet, s’il vous plait,” she instructed the taxi driver.
Very nice, thought Sam, as they pulled off the Champs-Elyses onto Avenue George V. The hotel took up the whole first block and was nothing if not stunning in the darkness.
Rebecca pulled him back to the Champs-Elyses. She had spotted something that may be useful. A short walk away, Rebecca pulled him into a restaurant called La Duree. Sam looked around, it was like something out of a chintzy dream. Someone had gone wild with green aqua paint. Rebecca shoved him past the restaurant entrance and into a queue of people looking at little multi colored circles. Even more bizarrely, Sam watched as one of the staff informed an excited customer, rather firmly, that he could not take photos of whatever they were.
“What the hell are we doing?” he asked through gritted teeth. He wanted to kill James Lawson.
“Looking like tourists!” said Rebecca, likewise through gritted teeth.
Almost thirty minutes later, they eventually reached the front of the queue. Rebecca purchased a bottle of Rose champagne and a box of mixed ‘macarons’. Sam was still blissfully unaware of what they were but went along with the charade. As Sam passed over a ludicrous amount of Euros, he received a small bag in return. Rebecca seemed delighted and took the bag swiftly from him.
“OK, perfect, we look like tourists returning to the hotel,” she announced with the small bag by her side. “Let’s go.”
They walked back to the hotel and encountered their first problem. The top floor of the hotel required a keycard to access it by lift. They exited the lift and walked back towards reception.
“Excuse me,” asked Sam, putting on his best Texan drawl. All foreigners thought Texans were money men, he had explained to Rebecca, who had to agree. Any Texans she had met on her travels had all been very rich.
The reception clerk’s French arrogance was unmistakable.
“Oui, monsieur?”
“What’s the best suite you’ve got in this hotel?”
“The Presidential, monsieur.”
“I’ll take it.”
Sam watched as the clerk took great pleasure in replying.
