“Surely you have room for one more . . . or at least a professional acquaintance.”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“If you’re going to drop your little bullshit charade and get down to business, or keep blowing smoke up my ass.”
Fournier smiled. “Fair enough.”
The waiter arrived with a fresh glass and new bottle. He poured a taste for Fournier, and after it was approved, he poured more into the glass, set the bottle down, and retreated. Fournier took a drink and placed the glass on the white tablecloth, holding the stem between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. Looking across the table at Hurley, he asked, “So what brings you to my beautiful city?”
“Just a little sightseeing, and Paulette, of course.”
Fournier laughed. “You’ll have to excuse me for being so blunt, but I think it is you who are blowing smoke up my ass.”
Hurley smiled in return, but inside he was boiling. Stansfield had pulled the plug on Victor, he’d announced he was flying over in the morning, and now this suit from DGSE had shown up. Individually, none of it was good, taken together, it was a mess, and now he had to dick around with this asshole for God only knew how long before he and Paulette could be alone. A night that had started out with such great promise appeared to be going to shit.
CHAPTER 30
THE alley was dark and narrow, six feet wide at one end and just four at the other. It was one of those antiquated paths that made sense before the invention of the internal combustion engine. Back in the day, a horse could have pulled a small cart down the alley to collect garbage and make deliveries. Today the garbagemen drove a three-wheeled scooter down the alley to collect the refuse.
Rapp had seen them do it and was fascinated by how they adapted. Growing up in the suburbs of D.C., all he’d ever seen were big lumbering garbage trucks with a massive steel maul in the back that swallowed and compacted the refuse as it rolled through the spacious neighborhoods. Paris was older and more cramped by American standards, but compared to many of Europe’s other gems it was downright spacious. At night, the space was like a tunnel, but Rapp wasn’t worried. This was a gentrified neighborhood, and if he happened to run into a criminal it would be the other man’s unlucky night, not his.
He took one last look around and then disappeared into the darkness. He had been in the apartment before. It had been a breach of protocol, or least not reporting it had been. In just one year’s time in the field Rapp had grown tired of the tedious aspects of his job. He also had a healthy skepticism of the one-way street that ran between him and his handlers in Virginia. While they kept him in the dark on a great many things, he was supposed to report to Kennedy the minutiae of his relatively mundane life. When he was on the hunt things were different, of course, but here in Paris, where he cooled his heels between assignments, his life was as boring as the average Joe’s.
Kennedy wanted weekly reports that contained, among other things, the particulars of any person Rapp came in contact with. Her fear was that another intelligence agency would target him for surveillance and possibly try to turn him or worse eliminate him. There was one other concern, but until recently, Rapp hadn’t thought it was possible. Kennedy feared that a terrorist organization, possibly with the help of a friendly state security service, would somehow ensnare him, torture him, and then show the world that the hated Satan employed assassins. The video would then end with them slicing his throat and Rapp drowning in his own blood.
Rapp reached the back entrance, and he could just barely make out Greta in the faint glow of the streetlights. He reached out and touched her arm, asking, “Any trouble?”
“No. I parked right where you showed me, waited until the right time, and walked straight here.”
“Good.” Rapp extracted the key and slid it into the brass lock with a steady hand. He turned, pushed, and stepped into a small back landing that smelled of equal parts garbage and bleach. Greta followed on his heels and the spring-loaded door closed quietly behind them. Rapp paused and listened for any noises that would tell him someone was moving about on the floors above them.
The next door was metal with glass on the top half. It had been painted the same cream color so many times to cover up the scuff marks from furniture, luggage, grocers’ carts, and garbage and whatever else people hauled in and out the service door that the paint was uneven and lumpy, especially at the bottom. Rapp nudged the door open and looked up the winding back staircase. There was another staircase at the front of the building and a small elevator as well. He was greeted with silence, so he motioned for Greta to follow and started up the carpeted stairs two at a time.
There was a simple reason he had decided to ignore Kennedy’s orders. If they could keep secrets from him, he could keep secrets from them. Besides, something had told Rapp that this place might come in handy one day. He reached the second floor and moved quietly but quickly down the length of the hallway to the last door on the right. The key was out and Rapp slid it into the old lock without hesitation. His greatest fear at this point was a nosy neighbor. He knew the key would work, because he had tried it before. The deadbolt opened with a faint click and Rapp turned the handle and stepped into the apartment. Greta was close behind. Rapp softly shut the door and did not reach for the light switch. Instead he stood there and listened. He was almost certain the owners weren’t home, but he wanted to know if anyone was moving about in the hallway.
Rapp had already filled Greta in on the owners of the apartment. It belonged to the McMahons, Bob and Teresa. Rapp had run into big Bob McMahon at Le Ponte Cafe five months before. A snobbish French waiter was doing his best to not understand McMahon’s simple order. Rapp had seen it before. Because he was fluent in French, it wasn’t a problem for him, but it was not uncommon for a bored waiter to pretend that he didn’t understand a thing that an American patron was trying to say. At first Rapp found it a bit amusing himself, until he thought about the number of Americans who passed through Paris daily and who by staying a bit, sightseeing and eating, pumped millions of dollars into the Parisian economy.
The big American looked as if he was about to grab the waiter by the scruff of the neck and drag him over the counter, so Rapp stepped in and translated McMahon’s order for him. The waiter snorted and marched off. McMahon turned to Rapp and asked, “What just happened?”
Rapp switched to English and said, “He understands English. He was just jerking you around. I told him to knock it off and get you what you wanted or I’d never tip him again.”
McMahon laughed, thanked Rapp, and then asked him where he was from. Rapp told him Orlando. It was part of his legend that Kennedy had meticulously prepared. Orlando was vanilla. People visited, but were hard-pressed to actually know anyone who grew up in the city that Disney had built. The metropolitan area had grown from several hundred thousand people to over a million in just two decades and it was still expanding. Tourism and retirement communities were the anchors of the local economy, and they both attracted a lot of workers from out of state. It was also home to the University of Central Florida, the second-largest university in America behind Arizona State
