Lie Down with Lions (1985)

“Sir.”

I’m back on the side of the law, Ellis thought. A pity Rahmi is so much more attractive a man than this cop.

He went down in the elevator. In the hotel lobby the manager, in black coat and striped trousers, stood with a pained expression frozen to his face as more policemen marched in.

Ellis went out into the sunshine. The black Citroen was on the other side of the street. There was a driver in the front and a passenger in the back. Ellis got into the back. The car pulled away fast.

The passenger turned to Ellis and said: “Hello, John.”

Ellis smiled. The use of his real name was strange after more than a year. He said: “How are you, Bill?”

“Relieved!” said Bill. “For thirteen months we hear nothing from you but demands for money. Then we get a peremptory phone call telling us we’ve got twenty-four hours to arrange a local arrest squad. Imagine what we had to do to persuade the French to do that without telling them why! The squad had to be ready in the vicinity of the Champs-Elysees, but to get the exact address we had to wait for a phone call from an unknown woman asking for Mustafa. And that’s all we know!”

“It was the only way,” Ellis said apologetically.

“Well, it took some doing—and I now owe some big favors in this town—but we did it. So tell me whether it was worth it. Who have we got in the bag?”

“The Russian is Boris,” said Ellis.

Bill’s face broke into a broad grin. “I’ll be a son of a bitch,” he said. “You brought in Boris. No kidding.”

“No kidding.”

“Jesus, I better get him back from the French before they figure out who he is.”

Ellis shrugged. “Nobody’s going to get much information out of him anyway. He’s the dedicated type. The important thing is that we’ve taken him out of circulation. It will take them a couple of years to break in a replacement and for the new Boris to build his contacts. Meanwhile we’ve really slowed their operation down.”

“You just bet we have. This is sensational.”

“The Corsican is Pepe Gozzi, a weapons dealer,” Ellis went on. “He supplied the hardware for just about every terrorist action in France in the last couple of years, and a lot more in other countries. He’s the one to interrogate. Send a French detective to talk to his father, Meme Gozzi, in Marseilles. I predict you’ll find the old man never did like the idea of the family getting involved in political crimes. Offer him a deal: immunity for Pepe if Pepe will testify against all the political people he sold stuff to—none of the ordinary criminals. Meme will go for that, because it won’t count as betrayal of friends. And if Meme goes for it, Pepe will do it. The French can prosecute for years.”

“Incredible.” Bill looked dazed. “In one day you’ve nailed probably the two biggest instigators of terrorism in the world.”

“One day?” Ellis smiled. “It took a year.”

“It was worth it.”

“The young guy is Rahmi Coskun,” Ellis said. He was hurrying on because there was someone else to whom he wanted to tell all this. “Rahmi and his group did the Turkish Airlines firebombing a couple of months ago and killed an Embassy attache before that. If you round up the whole group you’re sure to find some forensic evidence.”

“Or the French police will persuade them to confess.”

“Yes. Give me a pencil and I’ll write down the names and addresses.”

“Save it,” said Bill. “I’m going to debrief you completely back at the Embassy.”

“I’m not going back to the Embassy.”

“John, don’t fight the program.”

“I’ll give you these names. Then you’ll have all the really essential information, even if I get run down by a mad French cab driver this afternoon. If I survive, I’ll meet you tomorrow morning and give you the detail stuff.”

“Why wait?”

“I have a lunch date.”

Bill rolled his eyes up. “I suppose we owe you this,” he said reluctantly.

“That’s what I figured.”

“Who’s your date?”

“Jane Lambert. Hers was one of the names you gave me when you originally briefed me.”

“I remember. I told you that if you wormed your way into her affections she would introduce you to every mad leftist, Arab terrorist, Baader-Meinhof hanger-on and avant-garde poet in Paris.”

“That’s how it worked, except I fell in love with her.”

Bill looked like a Connecticut banker being told that his son is going to marry the daughter of a black millionaire: he did not know whether to be thrilled or appalled. “Uh, what’s she really like?”

“She’s not crazy although she has some crazy friends. What can I tell you? She’s as pretty as a picture, bright as a pin, and horny as a jackass. She’s wonderful. She’s the woman I’ve been looking for all my life.”

“Well, I can see why you’d rather celebrate with her than with me. What are you going to do?”

Ellis smiled. “I’m going to open a bottle of wine, fry a couple of steaks, tell her I catch terrorists for a living and ask her to marry me.”

CHAPTER TWO

Jean-Pierre leaned forward across the canteen table and fixed the brunette with a compassionate gaze. “I think I know how you feel,” he said warmly. “I remember being very depressed toward the end of my first year in medical school. It seems as if you’ve been given more information than one brain can absorb and you just don’t know how you’re going to master it in time for the exams.”

“That’s exactly it,” she said, nodding vigorously. She was almost in tears.

“It’s a good sign,” he reassured her. “It means you’re on top of the course. The people who aren’t worried are the ones who will flunk.”

Her brown eyes were moist with gratitude. “Do you really think so?”

“I’m sure of it.”

She looked adoringly at him. You’d rather eat me than your lunch, wouldn’t you? he thought. She shifted slightly, and the neck of her sweater gaped open, showing the lacy trimming of her bra. Jean-Pierre was momentarily tempted. In the east wing of the hospital there was a linen closet that was never used after about nine thirty in the morning. Jean-Pierre had taken advantage of it more than once. You could lock the door from the inside and lie down on a soft pile of clean sheets. . . .

The brunette sighed and forked a piece of steak into her mouth, and as she began to chew, Jean-Pierre lost interest. He hated to watch people eat. Anyway, he had only been flexing his muscles, to prove he could still do it: he did not really want to seduce her. She was very pretty, with curly hair and warm Mediterranean coloring, and she had a lovely body, but lately Jean-Pierre had no enthusiasm for casual conquests. The only girl who could fascinate him for more than a few minutes was Jane Lambert—and she would not even kiss him.

He looked away from the brunette, and his gaze roamed restlessly around the hospital canteen. He saw no one he knew. The place was almost empty: he was having lunch early because he was working the early shift.

It was six months now since he had first seen Jane’s stunningly pretty face across a crowded room at a cocktail party to launch a new book on feminist gynecology. He had suggested to her that there was no such thing as feminist medicine: there was just good medicine and bad medicine. She had replied that there was no such thing as Christian mathematics, but still it took a heretic such as Galileo to prove that the earth goes around the sun. Jean-Pierre had exclaimed: “You are right!” in his most disarming manner and they had become friends.

Yet she was resistant to his charms, if not quite impervious. She liked him, but she seemed to be committed to the American, even though Ellis was a good deal older than she. Somehow that made her even more desirable to Jean-Pierre. If only Ellis would drop out of the picture—get run over by a bus, or something . . . Lately Jane’s resistance had seemed to be weakening—or was that wishful thinking?

The brunette said: “Is it true you’re going to Afghanistan for two years?”