‘Two birds,’ Mouser said. ‘One stone.’
51
Rue du l’Abbe-Gregoire was a quiet street and Luke used the cabbie’s passkey to open the ground-level door of the building. He walked in.
The lion’s den. The truth behind his kidnapping. The truth behind his past.
It was tomb quiet. He walked up a narrow stairway. He had the cabbie’s passkey still in one hand and the gun he’d taken from the Night Road thug at the Tower in his other hand. The cabbie could have regained consciousness, called in and warned Jane.
Launcelot Consulting read the sign on the doorway. He tested the knob. Locked. He tried the passkey on the electronic pad next to it. It didn’t work. Tried again. Still didn’t work.
An idea struck him. He took his Saint Michael’s medal and pressed it against the pad.
The door opened.
His breath felt frozen in his chest. Because here was a threat far scarier than kidnapping or bullets or the unmoored violence of a Snow or a Mouser. Because here might be the truth. About his father, his stepfather, the shadows that had lain quiet close to his life, waiting to waken, and now dominated him. He raised the gun ahead of him and he stepped into the empty reception area. He closed the door behind him and he heard the lock take hold.
Dead quiet.
He moved through the rest of the office suite. The passkey opened every door but one. He saw cots, a table with guns, a small kitchen. It smelled like a small camp cabin: a lingering air of food, of cigarettes, of sweat. In one of the rooms, the corner held a single cot. Long dark strands of hair threaded the pillow. Aubrey’s rings, her watch lay on a bedside table.
Aubrey. They had kept her here.
He went into the next room.
Paper covered the walls. Clippings, photos, writings. Of Mouser and Snow and the thin black guy who’d nearly killed Luke and Drummond in New York.
It reminded him of his father’s study. His dad liked to post index cards and notes on a blank wall, scraps of history, economics and politics, to find the common links that would help him delve into a past mystery or outline a scholarly article or book. The sight of the collage of paper struck him; his father’s thoughts, put up on the wall.
He looked at the clippings and photos. The word HELLFIRE? was written on a piece of paper in the center, in his father’s handwriting. The wall looked like a project interrupted, as Quicksilver – his dad – tried to piece together the evidence about the Night Road.
Luke recognized the first photo as that of the man who’d been at the Houston rendezvous with Allen Clifford, recently shown executed on the Night Road’s site. He had small eyes, a weak mouth, nice hair. His driver’s license was next to him; his name was Bridger. A list of former addresses was posted next to his picture. But the photo next to him was a face seared into Luke’s brain, that of Allen Clifford. Alive, and then the press photos of him dead after Eric shot him. Luke read the handwritten notes beneath the pictures: Subject that Clifford is meeting with wishes to sell information on an impending multi-city terrorist attack. A date four days ago scrawled in: Subject meeting with Clifford, demands that they meet in open. Will not meet indoors, extreme paranoia. Insists on meeting at corner near Episcopal shelter on McCoy Street, near downtown, 9 p.m., Clifford to dress as homeless man, at subject’s request.
Mouser’s real name was Dwayne York. A blow up of his Texas driver’s license hung on the wall. He was a freelance web designer in Dallas. Ex-military. Dishonorable discharge. His friends called him Mouser because he got written up for shooting mice on the base. He had progressed to cats and dogs. A long history of loose ties to paramilitary groups; he had been implicated and spent time in prison for a loose connection to a radical group that tried to bomb a government building.
A picture, dated on the day his father’s plane went down. It was a security photo, a man in a maintenance suit, walking past a camera, head ducked slightly. It could be Mouser.
The bastard did it, Luke thought. He sabotaged my dad’s plane, he killed my dad’s friends, the son of a bitch.
Snow. Her real name was Roanna Snowden. One of the few survivors of the Children of the Lamb religious cult. He remembered the Feds besieging their compound; they had been massing weapons. He had just been a kid then, and so had Snow. She’d gotten a chemistry degree and then dropped out of sight. To make bombs, apparently.
The thin guy from New York. David Byrd, nicknamed Sweet Bird. A long list of crimes, a web of names with his at the center, prisons and terms served. Many of the names on the list were tied back to another network, a mosque in Queens, one with links to Wahhabi radicalists in Saudi Arabia. Stories of unsolved crimes where he had fallen under suspicion, including the murder of an assistant DA, were chronicled below his picture. Financial accounts that showed one of his associates had signed for cargo shipments carried by Travport. Luke remembered the name; Travport was the company that had bank accounts with Eric. Then a long list of recent attacks, small ones, against the city’s infrastructure: power stations, traffic lights. Small acts of sabotage, knife swipes at the soft tissue of everyday life.
There were photos, all overlaid on a map, of a shooting in Los Angeles, a bombing in Kansas City, a ruptured pipeline in Canada, the chlorine attack in Texas, as if whoever had assembled this collage – his father – was trying to piece together the people and the attacks, find the common links.
Looking at the map, a thought rose to his mind. The scattered bank accounts Eric had set up. California, Minnesota, Missouri, Texas – the locales of, or very close to, the attacks. Even the one failed attack – in Alaska, where the extremists had been arrested – he remembered the news account said the men were from Seattle. Washington state had been on the bank account list as well.
He stepped over to an array of computer screens. One screen showed a feed from the station at Les Invalides. In the screen’s corner was a frozen photo of himself, stepping onto the train at Champ de Mars. The cabbie must have gotten radioed reports, driven fast to each stop. Another photo of him, on the automated walkway at Les Invalides.
He could not believe that the place was empty. But then he considered. His father was a captive of the Night Road. The Frenchman was dead at the Tower and the cabbie was unconscious in the taxi. Maybe Quicksilver’s numbers in Paris were few. But where was Jane Mornay?
And if she was part of Quicksilver – part of his father’s organization – why had she done this? Why had she put Luke’s life at risk?
He tried the one door that the passkey denied again. Locked.
He tore down a curtain and wrapped it around the gun. He fired into the lock.
It took twenty minutes of intense arguing and haggling, but Mouser struck the unholiest of deals. The Islamic terror cell knew and trusted Mouser; he had previously sold them stolen credit card data from hijacked PCs. The cell’s leader listened to Mouser as he outlined his difficult request.
He needed a bomb, and he needed it right now.
The cell’s next martyr had planned to execute its Paris operation three weeks from now, during a visit by the Israeli prime minister. Everything was prepared. The martyr wanted to do his work.
Mouser said the cell’s leader needed to strike an office of the Israeli intelligence service, hidden in a quiet neighborhood. But they had to strike immediately. An attack on it would be a great blow before the Zionist’s visit. And Mouser could guarantee a strike, in payment, on Zionist targets inside the United States. As well, Mouser told the handlers what corporate stocks would be most affected in a massive planned American attack he referred to as Hellfire in the next couple of days: they could sell and buy accordingly, and realize a nice profit.
The cell’s leader was convinced. Sacrificing a martyr now could build a useful alliance.
Ten minutes after Mouser’s call, the martyr’s prayers were completed, and he was on his way, driving with deliberate care through the busy streets of Paris.
Behind the locked door was a small room. Luke saw a scattering of paper files, printouts; a large shredder sat
