“Suppose you let me explain something to you, Comrade Bonaparte,” he said in flawless French. “I am attached to the personal staff of General Sun-yat Moon of the People’s Republic of China. I hold the rank of colonel in the PLA. I am here at his behest, not yours. I am only in your country because of his personal involvement in your current situation. As it happens, his desires, and those of China herself, intersect with your own at this moment in history. That may not always be true. It is an alliance of convenience. You would do well to remember that.”
“Are you quite finished with your geopolitical lecture, Madame Colonel?”
“No. I don’t like surprises. You were supposed to meet me, not him. I know why he’s here. You two are appraising me, deciding whether I’m up to the task. Well, I don’t take orders from you, or him, or anyone else. I expect to be treated with the respect and courtesy befitting my rank and the current state of affairs between our two countries.”
There was a brief silence as the French minister considered this. Bonaparte had asked the Chinese in Beijing for a supremely qualified assassin. Their best, in fact. He’d clearly gotten even more than he’d asked for. He looked at von Draxis and smiled, raising his hands in a gesture of helplessness. Male shorthand for “What can one do?” When he next spoke, his voice was gentle and well-oiled.
“Sorry, Comrade Colonel. My profound apologies.”
“That’s much better. Continue to use that tone and we shall get along splendidly. Now, precisely when does this operation commence?”
“It has already begun. If you push that button by your right hand, a small monitor will come up out of the armrest. Good. There is the newscast showing the motorcade a few miles up ahead. You see the vehicle similar to our own, yes? Inside that car is the sultan of Oman, who has just arrived for a state visit. I am personally awarding him the Legion d’Honneur at a ceremony tomorrow morning.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“As you know, we always field a decoy vehicle or two on such occasions. To thwart potential terrorist attacks.”
“Naturally,” Madame Li said. “Standard procedure.”
“This morning, after a press conference at the Elysee Palace, a securite spokesman leaked a last-minute schedule change to a paid informant. He was told that I myself, and not Prime Minister Hon-fleur, would be greeting the sultan at the airport.”
“Ist gut, ja? The media follows that car and not this one. That one on the television,” von Draxis said in his thickly guttural German accent, “that is the sultan’s.”
“I made the connection, Baron,” Madame Li said, unable to hide his irritation with this kind of condescension. “But why?”
“We want the media choppers following the other car,” Bonaparte said calmly. “You’ll find out why in a minute.”
“Das ist sehr gut,” the German said, amused at the little woman’s impatience with them. He opened an aluminum case that was resting on his lap. Inside, nestled in black foam, a lightweight assault weapon and two rocket grenades. Von Draxis quickly assembled the weapon and affixed a grenade to the muzzle. A broad smile spread across the Teutonic features.
“Schatzi and his toys,” Bonaparte observed with some amusement.
“You should see mine,” Madame Li said with a coy smile. He found himself relaxing, having fun.
“Fasten your seat belt,” Bonaparte said, “I see we are getting close.” He lifted a receiver from its cradle and said a few words to the driver. The big car slowed perceptibly approaching an overpass over the A-1 motorway to Paris.
“Ach! Here zey come,” von Draxis said.
A second later, another vehicle swerved into view beside them traveling at high speed. It braked hard, slowing to match the pace of the Maybach. A hooded gunman was visible by the rear window of the nondescript Citroen sedan. As the distance between the two cars narrowed to six feet or less, a bearded man lowered the tinted window and pointed the muzzle of a heavy automatic weapon directly at the Maybach.
Madame Li’s instinct was to dive for the floor, but the seat belt and the meaty hand of the German on his shoulder kept him pinned to his seat. There was a muffled rattle from the sedan and heavy thuds as high-caliber rounds slammed into the door. The armor inside the door shuddered and stopped the bullets, but it was disconcerting, to say the least. He plainly saw the gunman, who wore a black balaclava, raise his sights, now aiming at the window inches away from his face.
“Get us the fuck out of here!” Madame Li screamed, and Luca looked over at her, amazed. The genteel and aristocratic female voice was gone, replaced by that of an older man, crazed with fear for his life.
“Schatzi, if you don’t mind?” Bonaparte said, pushing a button that retracted the large sunroof above their heads. Sunlight flooded the car and also the sound of a second automatic weapon at very close range. Another gunman was firing at the front-seat window, attempting to take out the Maybach’s driver.
Von Draxis, frighteningly quick for his size, got to his feet with the stubby grenade launcher in his hands. At that moment, the first gunman opened up again. The passenger window by Madame Li’s face instantly frosted over in overlapping starburst patterns as the heavy rounds slammed into the thick glass. Madame Li closed his eyes and waited for the next burst. There was a pause in the fire as if the terrorist shooter could not believe what he was seeing. He was firing from less than six feet away!
“Now, Schatzi,” Luca Bonaparte said.
The German was standing now, his feet wide apart to maintain balance. He was tall enough so that his body from the chest up was outside the big Maybach. He raised his weapon and fired. As he did, the Frenchman lowered the shattered window so they could see.
A loud whoosh above Li’s head and then a thunderclap explosion and a flash of fire lit the interior of the Citroen. The blast blew the roof off the sedan and thick black smoke poured from the blown-out windows as the car careened away, out of control. As the Maybach accelerated, Madame Li saw the burned-out sedan hit a bridge abutment head-on, and then the fuel tank blew. Flame and smoke climbed into the morning air. Out of nowhere, a motorcycle escort appeared around them and the big car surged forward and sped away from the carnage, quickly reaching a speed of 170 kph on the A-1 to Paris Centre Ville.
Madame Li sat back and closed his eyes. The powerful air-conditioning systems were quickly sucking the sharp smell of cordite out of the Maybach’s interior. He was content to wait for the explanation he knew would come. In the meantime, he formulated the message he would encode and transmit to the Golden Dragon as soon as he was comfortably checked into his suite at the hotel.
For the next forty-eight hours, he would be working with a man who was absolutely fearless and unstoppable. General Moon’s assessment had been correct. Luca Bonaparte was precisely the man Beijing had been looking for, for a long, long time.
“Well, that’s done,” Bonaparte said, and, with an appreciative nod to the German, reclined his seat once more. There was apparently a humidor in the console, because he extracted a cigar and fired it with a beautiful gold lighter. It was engraved with an ornate B encircled by an olive wreath.
Delusions of grandeur? This modern Bonaparte was many things, but Madame Li didn’t think delusional was one of them. A twisted visionary, perhaps, nothing new about that. Expelling a cloud of pungent smoke, he said, “Sorry, how rude of me, Madame Li. Would you care for a cigar? Schatzi doesn’t touch tobacco.”
“I think not.”
“A Vegas Robaina. A gift from my amigo, Fidel, during my last visit to his island paradise. A manly smoke.”
“You are most amusing, Monsieur Bonaparte,” Madame Li said with a wry smile. He’d dropped his guard during the heat of the moment and he’d caught it. Madame was a monsieur.
“Sorry if we alarmed you,” Bonaparte said, “but there wasn’t really time to explain.”
“I think we have a few minutes just now,” Madame Li said.
“Yes. By all means, let me explain. There was a young man in that Citroen named Philippe Honfleur. He was the youngest son of our current prime minister. He was the unwilling guest of a small cadre of rightist paramilitary types hired by me to attack this vehicle. Needless to say, they did not know that I would fight back. This outrageous attack on me by the prime minister’s son and his would-be fellow assassins will be viewed as a blatant attempt to derail my negotiations with the sultan of Oman. The evening news will be full of the attempts on both our lives.”
