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

Duval answered through clenched teeth. “Yes.”

“Good.” Graf took his file and left with his lieutenant in tow.

The cuffs were gone. His wounds were dressed. Duval had work to do. He eased himself from the bed. “Get up, Renard. We’re leaving.”

The sergeant didn’t move. “No. The doctors want to keep me under observation. I will stay for two days. The chief sent me an open-ended ticket home.”

“Open-ended, eh?” Duval snapped his fingers and held out a hand. “Give me the tablet. I want to see them.”

“I said, he sent me a ticket. Not you. The chief says you can fend for yourself.” Renard yanked the curtain closed. “You’re fired.”

46

Ben hunched down in his seat on the train to Montpellier, using the window’s reflection to watch the car’s television. The international manhunt had hit full swing. If he made it to the station, he’d have to give up public transportation for a while.

The news reports flashed his face across the screen four or five times an hour. They had a pair of videos and one good photo—his fake Interpol badge. The Dutch had pulled it from the lake bottom. Thankfully, he’d made the photo pre-frostbite, so his nose looked significantly different.

The videos included a webcam from the rainforest that caught his gun-blazing charge and a shaky police bodycam shot from his Paris standoff. The news report on the television froze the image at the juiciest moment. There was Ben, holding a gun to Clara’s head.

Ben searched. Oh, how he’d searched. But he never found her.

He haunted the hilltop forest surrounding the zoo far longer than wisdom allowed. After recovering his backpack from the hollow where he’d stashed it, he walked the perimeter, always moving—watching the cops and onlookers for Clara.

The medevac chopper flew in for Duval and his unfortunate partner. Paramedics wheeled injured guards out the front gates to a pair of waiting ambulances. The SWAT bus rushed onto the scene, late to the party as usual. The beat cops cordoned off sections of the parking lot for reasons Ben could not fathom, and lined up a crowd of witnesses.

None of the witnesses were Clara.

The medics didn’t have her. The cops didn’t have her.

When the K-9 units arrived, Ben knew he’d lingered too long. He pounded a fist into a tree and ran down the hill to the outlying train station at Dübendorf.

The frozen video behind the reporter took over the train’s TV screen and zoomed in on Ben. They wanted the viewers to see as much of his face as possible, but all Ben saw was the gun he held to her head.

Why hadn’t he brushed past her in the hallway outside his flat? That day, Ben had convinced himself he needed to prevent Clara from being caught in the explosion, but she would never have continued to the flat once he passed her by. So why did he do it? Had Ben dragged Clara along because—in the first moments of his life’s collapse—part of him wanted her near?

And now she’d been taken. But by who?

Leviathan owned Duval. Ben had no doubt. If Duval knew to find him in Zürich, so did they. He’d been too worried about the sniper, the schoolmaster, and the dirty cop—the obvious threats. But the most dangerous enemy is the one you don’t see coming.

The news program moved on to the French political primaries, and Ben let his head rest against the window. His reflection faded, leaving only some nameless valley flying by outside. No villages. No lights. Only the deep, empty dark that lies between the setting sun and the rising moon. He closed his eyes, noting no difference, and let himself fall into the void.

The station announcement woke him. Arrive maintenant. Gare de Montpellier Sud. Ben shook enough blackness away to join the slow march of red-eye travelers shuffling up the aisle to change trains. Most still had hours left on their journeys. Ben did too. His ticket told him to find Platform 7 and catch the 2:15 to Barcelona. He made his way to the exit instead.

With Ben’s face all over the news, continuing on the rails ceased to be an option. The girl who’d sold him his ticket might recognize the pictures at any time and call the police. He had to find an alternate mode of travel, and he knew just who to ask for a ride.

Four years in the spy game had taught Ben that money talks, and it talks loudest at the waterfront’s smelliest and goriest piers. Even better, guys with hands drenched in blood and guts rarely mix with screens. One of Hale’s crustier schoolhouse instructors had taught Ben that.

A field operative needs to know where to find safe passage when the press blows his cover. And there’s only one guaranteed place. After generations of screen addiction, when humankind finally succumbs to phone-in-hand disease and walks with heads permanently bowed, one segment of society will still comfortably and constantly watch the horizon. Fishermen. You’ll find them on a hundred boats, beaches, and docks—eyes on the water or their lines, but never on a phone.

The predawn crowd at the Sète fish market did not disappoint. The fish, gutted and tossed on stacks of ice, were hake, if Ben remembered correctly from his last trip to a Mediterranean quay. Hake only came out at night, and the night trawling life’s forever-darkness attracted many scruple-free crews.

Ben’s cuts and bruises—his blistered nose and cheeks—fit in well here. And he didn’t see a single screen. These men had no time to look at tweets or listen to news reports about a zoo gunfight that left no bodies behind. He waited for a skipper to wander away from the pack and followed him out to a boat gently rocking at the quay, not the smallest trawler on the line but far from the biggest.

The skipper stopped a pace short of the water. “If you’re planning to mug me,” he said in French, “at least wait until I’ve collected