The Phoenix Affair - Dave Moyer (smart ebook reader TXT) 📗

his job dull, but it was quiet and he made enough money, and he mostly slept through this night shift. To a man of more ambition, or personality, this might have been exciting. But this clerk only wanted to be rid of the police, and of whoever had brought them here. Obviously it must be the American who had come in last night; this was his room after all.

He produced the key and reached for the door, but a grip like iron took him by the wrist, and he turned to the face in semi-panic. The policeman had hard, cold eyes, but he held his finger to his lips first, then held out his hand palm up, and mouthed “the key”. The clerk handed it over and stepped back from the door, and began to inch his way further back down the hallway.

The key went into the lock, and the big policeman lifted his left hand, his forefinger making the shape of a pistol with index finger and thumb. The other five men drew weapons from their holsters and waited. Left handed again the lead man drew his own gun, turned the lock with his right, and burst into the room. The others flooded in behind him, or at least three of them did: there was not room for the rest, who remained in the hall. Four 9mm pistols swept the room, three converging on the bed, the fourth trained on the closed bathroom door. The bed was empty, and there was no sound.

Another hand signal and the four men separated as much as they could in the small room, while one quietly grasped the bathroom door. The leader held up five fingers, and began to count them down. At the last the man at the door hauled it open, ducking quickly behind it in the hopes that if anyone fired he would not be hit by his own people or whoever was inside. He held his breath, but only for a split second. No shots, no sound at all, and then just the sighs of men relaxing and the squeak of their equipment belts. The room was empty, the American was gone.

The leader produced a small radio from the belt at the small of his back, made the report, and then held the speaker well away from his ear as the screaming began to come back in reply.

Ripley drove up in the parking lot outside the run-down Holiday Inn at 0630 as he'd agreed with Cameron, now accompanied by Jones and Allen who’d wandered into the Embassy just as he was preparing to leave. He was amazed by what he saw. Apart from the four Paris Police vehicles, this was the perfect place for a man like Cameron to have gone to ground. It was off the beaten path, far enough from Orly airport to be un-interesting to the average tourist or transiting passenger. There were only a few cars in the lot apart from the police; the place had to be nearly empty. It had been a good choice, but that was moot now, and Cameron was taken. He was wondering what had gone wrong when the phone on his hip began to vibrate. Still watching the front of the hotel, a feeling of deep depression starting to take hold, he opened it and said simply, “Yes?”

“Have you read Seven Pillars of Freedom lately?” asked a familiar voice.

“Colonel?” Ripley replied, in shock. “But where . . .”

“I got itchy, so I moved,” Cameron said simply. “You don’t sound so good, Patrick.”

“But how . . .what . . .” Ripley stumbled on, not sure what to do first. “Did you know the cops were coming? How did you know, how did you . . .”

“So they’re there, are they?” Cameron said, and a laugh came over the line. “Well, that’s a good lesson, follow your gut. You have something to write on, Patrick?”

“Yeah, sure, hold one,” he produced a small notebook from the inside pocket of his coat. “Ready, Colonel.”

“OK, do you know the Aérodrome de Toussus-le-Noble, southwest of Paris? It’s 6 kilometers south-southwest of Versailles. Do you have a map?”

“Yeah, just a minute.” He thumped Jones on the shoulder to get his attention, and pointed at the glove compartment, mouthing “MAP”. Jones went to work, and had the map open in half a minute.

Ripley started the car and drove slowly past the hotel parking lot, turning left at the end of the lane, and left again, headed toward the entrance to Orly. Allen fell in behind in the rented minivan.

“Right, Colonel, we’re looking for it. How the hell did you get there?”
“I’m not really there, actually, but I’ve been there. Nice, quiet place with just the right equipment, as it were. Right now I’m in an alley about a mile further west of there. Have you found it yet?”

Ripley looked at Jones, who pointed to the map and held it over so the other could see. He noted the highway loop around southern Paris, easy enough, and he knew how to get to Versailles of course. He made a right at the next intersection to head south toward the motorway.

“Found it, Colonel, on our way. What do you have in mind?”

“Nothing fancy, but perhaps a little unexpected. Meet me at the Palais Versailles in the gardens near the entrance gate at around eight this morning. That should give you plenty of time. Did you bring paperwork for me?”

Ripley shook his head, amazed again. Who is this guy, anyway? “I have the goods, Colonel. But how . . .”

“Not now, Ripley, I’ll tell you when we meet. Before you come, there’s something else I need.” He told him, and finished with “See you about eight, don’t be late, the weather won’t hold all day.”

“But . . .” Ripley started to say, but the line was dead. He thought briefly of calling back, but he was actually embarrassed that the amateur Colonel had managed to evade capture when the professionals had thought they were ahead of the game, so he thought better of it. He looked at Jones.

“Who the hell is this guy, anyway?”

“Can’t tell you all of it,” Jones replied, “I don’t know the guy at all myself, never met him, only the file. He’s something, though, and the DDO has a special interest in him. How much time did you spend with him yesterday, what did you think?”

“Almost 6 hours, counting the aikido class.” Ripley eased the car up to 120 kilometers per hour on the expressway, Allen was several car lengths back, keeping up. “Interesting guy, really. Very fit for his age, sharp eye for detail, can handle himself when he needs to. Doesn’t miss much. Was he trained at the Farm?”

Jones hesitated to consider, and decided he could tell a little. “No, not a bit. As a matter of fact, he hasn’t been trained at all, not by us at least. He’s still an active-duty officer in the Air Force, and he flies a desk for the last twelve years. No intelligence experience at all. Amazing, isn’t it?”

Ripley pursed his lips and was silent. “So what’s he doing out here in Indian Country? He didn’t really expect an answer, but his mind was working it through, not very successfully.

“I’ll let him tell you when we get where we’re going.”

“Fine, but first we have another errand to do.” Ripley dialed his phone again, and when it answered, he began simply with “Viper . . .”

*****

Colonel Cameron dropped his own phone into his pocket and walked a block West, turning North as he emerged from the alley on a quiet street lined with trendy shops and cafés, an obvious tourist haunt. He approached a car parked in front of a rather large patisserie, not yet open, and got in the passenger side.

“Sabah ilkhair, ya Majid,” he said in Arabic as the driver opened his eyes.

“Sabah innur, ya aquid Paul, “ “good morning to you, Colonel Paul”, he answered unconsciously. He rubbed his eyes sleepily, then turned to look into the back seat. Mohammed and Miriam al-Auda slept there still. Majid shifted his gaze through the rear window to the car behind them, also parked next to the curb. He could just see his cousin Fahd through the windshield, also asleep. He knew Fadia and the boy would be in the back.

“So, my new friend, what do you plan to do with these poor people now, God be with them?” he asked.

“We wait for now,” Cameron said without looking, instead scanning the street ahead and to both sides, alternating in the two side view mirrors to check behind them. “And we get off the street as soon as we can. This café,” he pointed, “should open at seven, that’s just another ten minutes. Until then we wait as quiet as can be.”

“Then I shall try to sleep for the ten minutes while you watch, Colonel. It has been a tiring night for me.”

“A good idea my friend,” and he glanced as the Saudi slouched down behind the wheel and closed his eyes.

Calling the commercial attaché at the Saudi Embassy had been Fahd’s idea, and a good one. Majid was soft, not quick, and very Saudi in terms of any sense of urgency, but Cameron liked him already. He had come quickly, brought the cars, and moved them skillfully. Indeed, in many ways he was not typical at all.

Laying that aside for the moment, he considered the last few hours. He’d dozed only briefly after Ripley’s call at three o’clock, a typical third night in Europe for him, but he was so tired even the brief twenty minutes or so that he’d been asleep had brought everything clear to him in an instant. They had to move. The pieces were just too easy to put together. His credit cards were all over town, probably photos from his passport taken by copier at each of the hotel desks when he’d checked in. The French were on their own turf, and they would be looking for someone to pin the shootings on quickly—Paris depended on stability for the tourism business, and without that, business would grind to a halt. No, the Paris police and probably the FNP would be all over this, pulling out the stops, grinding out information. He’d used one of Fahd’s cards to register at the Holiday Inn, but they would have his information from the hotel Agora, too, and it was only a matter of time.

So, at four-thirty he’d called Fahd and told him the bad news—they had to move again, but this time they needed something besides the Metro. The family was up and getting ready instantly, but it took them some minutes of brainstorming before Fahd suggested his cousin. It was perfect. But, it did take some time. Majid arrived at the hotel at five-thirty, an hour after he’d decided they needed to run, and he’d been expecting the police to roll up in force for over half an hour when Majid arrived with the car, and another driven by a long-time family servant. The latter he dismissed with a hundred-Euro note, to take a taxi back home when he could find one. They were loaded and gone at twenty-five minutes to six, and only then did he relax.

The next move had been his idea, but it depended on how quickly Ripley’s people could produce the necessary paperwork. All his own papers were too dangerous to use at this point, and whatever Ripley brought him would all have to match, of course—the names, birthdates, all of it. Fahd and family could not get new documents so easily, even with Majid, and they didn’t have time to lurk around Paris for half the day waiting for the Saudi consular people to get it done. So the major airports, international flights, the TGV and the Chunnel train, they were all definitely out of bounds. But it was past time to quit France, past time to move on to