The Paris Betrayal by James Hannibal (the dot read aloud .txt) 📗

broken passenger windows with a garbage bag he stole from a dumpster, secured by duct tape from his go-bag.

“This is the border.”

“Of Luxembourg?”

“Yes.”

“Can we stop for a bite to eat?”

“No.” He reached into the back seat, grabbed his backpack, and dropped it in her lap. “Egg white bars and gummy bears. Don’t forget to share with Otto.”

She ate, glowering at him and passing the occasional morsel to her dog, while Ben skirted the eastern edge of Luxembourg City. He chose the small highway along the River Syre for the turn north. Any highway made him nervous, but if he didn’t reach his goal before sunset, the man he planned to meet might kill him.

“The terrain is rising,” Clara said, leaning forward to look out the windshield. “This bullet man of yours, he lives in the mountains?”

“Snipers love a good perch.”

“So he’s a sniper.”

“A good one.”

“And you are friends?”

“I thought we were.” Ben kept his eyes on the road and the intersections ahead—any pockets where cops might be lying in wait. “Until yesterday, when he tried to blow my head off. His name’s William Sensen. He works for my people, not for Leviathan.” He shook his head, once again fighting off his own suspicions. “None of this makes any sense.”

Ben left the highway and wound his way up a narrow road barely wide enough for the Peugeot. They passed a ruin overlooking a sheer drop. Stone walls. A crumbling tower. Probably some duke’s hunting lodge from way back in the day. Americans would have fenced the place off and surrounded it with orange cones. The Luxembourgers had thrown up a hasty metal sign with one sentence in three languages—none of them English. The French line read Procédez à vos risques et périls. Proceed at your own peril. Ben nodded and let out a mirthless laugh.

A kilometer past the ruin, he took a gravel road west and continued to climb until it ended in a clearing. “We’re here.”

“Here?”

“That’s what I said.”

Clara pointed out through his side of the car. Headstones and slabs dotted a stepped hillside with the names all worn away and no fence or wall to guard them. “This is a graveyard.”

“Sensen lives farther up on the ridgeline, in an old chalet he restored. He calls it Hochsitz Wipfel, the Treetop Perch. We met there at the start of a mission once.” Ben lifted his pack from her lap and dug out his knife and two spare magazines for his Glock. He pulled out Duval’s revolver as well, laying it on the dash. “You know how to use this?”

“Does it matter? If a sniper wants me dead, he’ll kill me.”

If a sniper wants you dead, kid, he’ll kill you. Ben could see Hale’s stern face when he’d said those same words years before. How had his schoolmaster’s saying wound up on Clara’s lips? He kept his hand on the weapon. “What did you say?”

“I said he’ll kill me if he wants to. I’ll never see him, right? Isn’t that the point of a sniper?”

“An old spy I know used to say the same thing.”

“Because it’s common sense. But I’ll take the gun if it makes you feel better.” She pushed his hand away from the revolver, picking it up and waggling it at him. “These things are point-and-shoot, right?”

“Cute. Stay in the car.”

She saluted. “Whatever you say.”

Three paces from the Peugeot, Ben heard a car door slam. He glanced back to see Clara on her way around the hood, following him with Otto on a leash. His head dropped to his chest. “Maybe your English isn’t as good as I thought. What happened to staying in the car?”

“I don’t like this. Assassins move around a lot, right? How do you know he still lives here?”

“Fresh clippings.”

She gave him a quizzical look.

Ben headed for the shadow of the pines, nodding at the rows of slabs and headstones. “Who do you think trims the weeds around these graves?”

23

CHAVILLE, FRANCE

Duval watched the cottage burn, digging a finger under the bandage on his head to get at an itch. The Chaville fire department struggled to manage the blaze, fed by all that oil. He’d arrived at nine o’clock and sent the town’s municipal police force out to form roadblocks. Their chief obeyed his every command like a trained poodle. The man knew their place. But the locals wouldn’t catch their quarry. Duval didn’t want them to.

He needed to catch this one alone.

“I think the bomber is our man Calix from yesterday.” Renard returned from gathering witness statements, notebook out, white tape plastered across his face to keep his nose straight. The restriction dulled his speech. “I got a description from a caretaker at the next cottage down. He saw a man, a woman, and a dachshund near the house after the explosion—on the lake side, close to the path.”

“I suspected Calix did this the moment we received the call. He’s on a rampage. What else?”

The sergeant checked his notes. “Ehh . . . I have a physical description . . . He carried a backpack . . . approached the house . . . and . . . Ah.” He raised his pen like a flag. “A car. He drove off in a Peugeot.”

“A cream-colored Peugeot 308.”

“Yes. How did you know?”

Duval kicked the remains of a sideview mirror lying on the grass between them. “He left part of it behind.” He pulled Renard out of the way of a fireman running between the hoses and the truck. “I’m losing patience, Sergeant. Tell me something I haven’t figured out on my own.”

“How about this? The witness says the car belonged to the woman who lived here.”

“Belonged?” Past tense. “Was she home?”

“The caretaker believes so. I can find out her name from the buyer registry, connect her to Calix.”

Duval took some time to process this. Another death. Violent. A justification to shoot Calix on sight—almost. He stared into the dying flames. “I spoke to a witness as well. A jogger. She also saw Calix and the woman near the house, on the lake