Around the same time, Leonora Tesla, who she admired more so now that she understood what the Volunteers had achieved, had asked her to join her for a drink after hours. They’d gone to a Latin lounge in Dupont Circle, where they were surrounded by careless singles floating between youth and responsibilities, six fresh faces crammed at tables for four. Giddy conversations rose over bubbling music. “Charley,” Tesla shouted, “here’s my advice: Don’t take any advice. Listen to your own heart in your own time.”
Now on the Champs Elysees, reflecting on those memories four-thousand miles away, Charley watched a tour bus scored with Hangul script wheezed to a halt, blocking traffic. She grimaced as taxi horns blared, and then returned to her solitude.
Perhaps 30 yards behind Charlotte Middleton in the park was a self-satisfied man in his 50s, tanned with salt- and-pepper hair. His blue suit, cut to perfection, was impressive even in the
“I’m on Middleton’s daughter,” he said. “In Paris. I’ll stay with her.” He hung up without waiting for a response.
Ian Barrett-Bone had gotten over the shock of nearly being gunned to death on a road outside of Paris. He and his employer were used to wielding money and threats of violence-and violence itself-to force people to do the most despicable things. Many of them sputtered and swore and promised to get even. But few did.
Jana was different, of course.
Barrett-Bone himself was motivated by money and thrill. He considered a desk job the purest of tortures.
But Jana? What drove her?
Idealism, he supposed. How childish a motive. How meddlesome.
Yet her appearance on that road outside Paris was a sharp reminder of the danger everyone was facing.
How many other deaths would occur-all because of the copper bracelet?
He watched as Charley rose from the bench. She took a long, final swig of the sparkling water and tossed its green plastic bottle in the trash, along with the heel of the bread. Then she thought better of it, retrieved the bread, crumpled it and offered the crumbs to pecking pigeons.
“She couldn’t be more American if she tried,” Barrett-Bone muttered to himself as he regarded the attractive woman with a measure of disgust.
He glanced at his Patek Phillippe wristwatch as he resumed following Middleton’s daughter from a discrete distance. He imagined she would continue to wander aimlessly, her guard down, defenses non-existent.
Felicia Kaminski, now conscious, and Pierre Crane sat side by side in the back row of the Mercedes van, their wrists cuffed together with plastic, their ankles tied to each other’s. The driver had managed to shackle them in seconds while Jana trained her gun at the two captives.
A double beep of a cell phone sounded. Jana answered. She spoke in a language Crane took to be Hindi. Then she spun to face the prisoners. “I have just learned,” she said in thickly accented English, “that you are not Charlotte Middleton.”
Felicia said nothing.
Jana barked at Crane. “Who is she?”
“I have no idea. I can ask her, but it will have to be in English. But I don’t think she speaks French.”
“You,” Jana said in halting English. “What your name is?”
“Felicia.”
Jana looked at Crane. “Is French,” she said in English.
“Is Polish,” he replied in French. He was going to mention her accent, but knew Jana couldn’t detect it, no more than he could distinguish between an Algerian or a Moroccan when they spoken French. “She may be his maid.”
“A maid who can fight.”
“I think she was defending herself. A lucky blow with the instrument. You have the wrong girl.”
Crane knew they were heading southeast.
“I think she’s a little off,” he added. “Incompetent. You know… ”
Felicia seemed to will herself not to stare at him, not to stomp his foot.
Jana had Crane’s gun in her lap.
“Let her go,” the reporter said.
The driver glanced at Jana.
“Let her go and I’ll help you.” Crane was after a story. He was after Jana. He had no quarrel with the young woman.
“How? How can you help me?”
“I’m searching for the Scorpion. And so are you. I know things about him. I saw your face when you noticed the men in the limo. You were disappointed neither of them was him.”
“Give me a fact. Something I can use.”
“And you’ll let her go?”
She stared at him. “Maybe I kill you
“Or maybe I help you and nobody dies.”
“Pay for one life. Yours or hers. Give me a fact.”
Crane thought for a moment. What would be dear to her yet not give too much away? “There’s a Dubai connection.”
“Dubai? What?”
“That’s all I’ll tell you for now. For my own protection.”
Jana debated. Then she turned to the driver and spoke in Arabic. “Dump her by the O2,” she said. “We keep him.”
Middleton stood on the driver’s side of his car, his head hung in frustration. The London address Jean-Marc Lespasse found on Kavi Balan’s computer was a mosque just south of Tufnell Park, a thriving neighborhood in North London populated by hundreds of Muslims and far, far fewer Hindus. The mosque had a noxious reputation its new, moderate leadership couldn’t quite erase: Before his conviction for murder and racial hatred, its previous imam advocated jihad with suicide bombing its primary form-no one seemed to doubt his involvement in the 7/7 attacks. Supporting al-Qaeda’s violent activities, it had offered training in assault weapons and served as a clearinghouse for untraceable telecommunications equipment.
“A ruse,” he said. “A joke.”
From the opposite side of the car, Tesla replied, “Not necessarily. Maybe someone here”-she nodded toward the mosque and the squat brick buildings that lined the street-“knows of an attack on the mosque. It might not be a dead end.”
“But it’s a lead that will take weeks of infiltrating to develop. We don’t have the time. Not with what’s going on.”
Tesla tugged on the car door, but it was locked. “You’re right. We need to strategize.”
Middleton dug into his pocket and tossed her the keys. “Take the car,” he said. He gestured in the direction of the Tufnell Park Underground station. “I’m going to Wigmore Hall to see Felicia. It was damned thoughtless of me to forget her recital. Lose the weapons and catch up with me, if you’d like. We can talk to Connie and Jean-Marc once they get settled in Tampa.”
Middleton emerged from the Underground at Oxford Circus, amused by how quick the trip had been, even with the transfer at Euston. He imagined Nora still on the 503 motorway, if traffic was lurching. By instinct, he checked his common cell phone first. One message from Felicia, probably chiding him for failing to remember her recital or his lack of interest in crossword puzzles, cryptograms and such. When he looked at his encrypted phone, he saw he had no messages-nothing from NATO, the French, Interpol or the ICC as a post-mortem on the Cap d’Antibes operation; nor from Charley, Nora, Jean-Marc, Connie or Wiki. As he crossed the park at Cavendish Square, he thought for a moment of Wetherby, the bright NATO officer who gave his life to help prevent another godless
