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

Ben had passed through Rotterdam no less than eight times in the last four years, once in a shipping container outfitted by Dylan as a tactical command center.

He bristled at the thought of the young tech.

How could Dylan do that to Giselle? Maybe he hadn’t. Maybe someone had stolen the demolition package from him.

Unlikely.

From where Ben sat, Dylan looked like the real traitor.

Superstructures towered above the Peugeot’s cracked windshield on the port’s main road. Containers were stacked like city blocks, filled with textiles and ore, rubber dog toys and clown marionettes—anything and everything imaginable. At some point, one of those containers had brought a Leviathan acolyte to town, and a backpack filled with CRTX, the world’s newest and most powerful explosive.

The slip of paper with Sensen’s six-letter address brought him to a cargo pier that looked like all the others—containers, cranes, and giant ships. A guardhouse and a ten-foot spiked fence blocked access for all traffic but the big rigs. Ben parked in the dockworker lot as far out of sight as he could manage, in the shadow of some containers stacked on the fence’s other side. A be-on-the-lookout alert on a damaged cream Peugeot 308 had likely spread across Western Europe. Before day’s end, he’d need to dump it in a river.

He stuffed the paper into his go-bag and took a last look at the PVC badge he’d made at the print and copy shop. Confident it would hold up, he smiled in the mirror. “Agent Tom Porter, Interpol.”

The days of fake ID badges made from laminated paper and alligator clips are long gone. White PVC access badges with magnetic strips have become the norm, from government agencies to the corner grocery store. The US military still likes to pretend their badges are special, but anyone can purchase blanks online at eight cents a pop and add a name and face with the right printer.

Alongside the egg white bars and bullets in his go-bag, Ben always kept a stack of PVC blanks. The identity he’d made at the copy shop would last the day, at least—long enough to do some investigating. He pressed his badge against the turnstile reader, then waved it at the guard across the road, careful to cover the logo with his fingers. “A little help? Reader’s not working!” He didn’t need to speak Dutch. Aussie dominance in the dockworker field had made a corrupted form of English the universal language of industrial piers.

The turnstile buzzed, ending in a pronounced click. “Thanks,” Ben said, pushing through. He’d run that game a hundred times. No guard had ever challenged him.

“Oi! You! Whaddaya think yer doing!”

Ben had barely made it past the fence. A burly dockworker came hurrying toward him, and Ben answered with a look that said Who, me?

The dockworker pointed upward to a four-ton shipping container swinging high above them on the way to the stacks next to the parking lot. “Hard hat.” He slapped the top of the one on his head. “Where’s yours?”

An Aussie. No surprise, and this one carried himself like a foreman. He had the walk—forward leaning, a touch of swagger. Forklifts had left slick tracks in the previous night’s snow. The Aussie rolled over them without the slightest misstep, dropping his voice from a shout to a boisterous bleat as he drew closer. “Your hard hat, mate. Where is it?”

“Agent Tom Porter. Interpol.” Ben took control of the encounter, trumping safety with the universal authority of a well-known law enforcement agency. He flashed the badge, then clipped it to his lapel. “Official business. Point me to the temporary crew quarters, please.”

The foreman bowed up to him. “I don’t care if you’re the king of Sweden. You step onto my pier, you wear protection. No exceptions.”

Ben liked this guy, but he didn’t back down. “I’ll get the necessary gear Mr.”—he read the man’s badge, tensing his jaw—“Kent, just as soon as you point me to the temporary crew quarters.”

Kent fixed him with a hard stare for a long moment, then tilted his head toward four stories of rusted steel and dirty windows. Nothing but the best for the anonymous cargo sailors keeping the world in motion. “Over there. Talk to old Alard.”

He left the man standing there without a thank you.

“Oi!”

Ben paused, gritting his teeth, but he didn’t turn.

“What’s Interpol want, eh? Is it that bomber again? I thought you cops had given up.”

“We never give up, Mr. Kent.” He walked on.

The bomber remained unidentified. No identification had been found at the scene. At least, that’s what the public reports said, and Ben had no access to the classified versions. But the sketch Clara had drawn from Sensen’s description might get him somewhere if the guy had spent any time at all in the crew barracks.

“Mag ik u helpen?” A gray-haired man with a bushy mustache sat in a folding camp chair outside the front door. The stench in there must have been pretty bad for him to prefer sitting out in the freezing cold.

“Alard?”

“Yes.”

As Ben’s lips parted for his Agent-Tom-Porter spiel, a reflection in the glass doors of the barracks gave him pause.

Alard stood up from his chair. “Sir? May I help you?”

Ben ignored him and turned. A forklift had moved a container stack down the pier, clearing his view of a massive ship. On the bow he saw a white sea serpent with three coils wrapped around a globe. The lettering beneath read Sea Titan Cargo.

Sea Titan. Leviathan.

If the bomber spent any time in the barracks at all before the dog flagged him, he’d have spent hours at most. But he’d have spent days, maybe more than a week, on the ship that brought him in, probably living inside a container, venturing out at night when the only lights were the spots focused on the ship’s tower logo. He’d have spent enough time on board for that logo to become so seared in his brain that he absentmindedly doodled it on his