State of Attack (26 page)

Three minutes later, Ibrahim was wearing the man’s clothes. He’d taken his wallet and cellphone, too. He’d thought about slashing at the jugular with the jagged china. But knowing what would happen, he figured he couldn’t rush away quickly enough, and he’d end up covered in the blood that would burst out in a geyser; halfway to the ceiling, no doubt.

Instead, he slit the man’s wrists. He could recognize him when questioned. Besides, he deserved to bleed out, the corrupt, capitalist unbeliever deserved it. Covering the dying Frenchman with his dishdasha, Ibrahim hoped the combination of the water seepage and the can would dissuade anyone else from entering. He only needed a little more time.

He walked over to the wash basins and peered at his refection in the clear mirror above, thinking he looked drawn and a decade older than his thirty-five years. He removed the false beard and hairpiece that he’d put on aboard the Turkish fishing boat before peeling off the false nose. He took a small jar from his bag and smeared the cream over his face, hands and forearms, and applied it to his thin neck before using the tissue paper to remove it.

It had been provided for him by chemists in Saudi Arabia, using a formula copied from the CIA, who used it to remove the darkening agent that deep-cover operatives and core collectors utilized when they were in the Middle East. The darkening agent had been bought from a Chinese company, and he knew that once it had been removed his disguise would be gone, too. He didn’t have a fresh supply, and tanning creams were no substitute. He walked over to another cubicle and stuffed the toilet tissue and false hair deep down into the bowl before flushing the toilet twice.

On his way to the exit door he glanced at his reflection in the stainless steel mirror. His clean-cut image made him look his age, except his black hair was flecked prematurely with grey around the sides. And his eyes, the colour of chestnuts, were furrowed in between like half-faded scars. But he wasn’t an Arab, nor was he from the Greater Middle East. He was a Caucasian, what the West called a white man.

He had five false passports and a genuine one. He looked just as he did on the photo taken five years ago for his genuine one.

An American passport.

Chapter 69

Tom pulled up outside the mall after TSM had said that this was the spot and Lester had lowered the window and had stuck his head out and had said that there was a bird in the sky.

“One thing,” Lester said. “Pretty important, too, you ask me. What does this guy we’re chasing look like?”

Tom nodded, feeling like a jerk. He hadn’t asked TSM and didn’t even know if the Frenchman knew, either.

“Long hair and beard. White robe, some say,” TSM said.

“So we’re after a Jesus lookalike,” Lester said.

TSM handed out two-way radios. “I’ll take the second floor. Lester, the first. Tom, you take the ground floor.”

With that four police cars arrived at the mall and hit the sidewalk and barrelled forwards onto the pristine lawns in front of the mall, causing muddy tyre tracks.

By the time Tom, Lester and TSM had entered the mall, a police cordon had been thrown up outside. As Lester and TSM vaulted up the escalator, Tom scanned around the small crowd. Amid the confident young women in their haute couture, the irritable children with their frazzled parents en route to kindergarten, and the pale, baggy-eyed night workers, he saw a man about the same height as him, who’d just come out of the restroom. He was dressed in an expensive blue pinstripe that didn’t fit. The arms were riding up too high on the cuffs and the trousers were a bunch of creases at the waist. Given the obvious cost of the suit it wasn’t right, Tom thought, unless he’d spent the last month on a rack being fed cabbage soup, or if it was the latest Paris fashion, which he seriously doubted.

But the guy was a clean-shaven Westerner, with a neat haircut. He noticed something that looked like blood on the white lapel of his outsized shirt, but thought it could’ve been caused by a nick as he was shaving. But there was something else, he was avoiding the CCTV cameras, putting his hands over his face, and ensuring he was out of the field of vision. He was doing his best to avoid being seen, no doubt about it.

With that the fire alarm went off. But the water sprinklers failed to function, which meant there was no fire, and that the authorities wanted to evacuate the building so that they could process everyone else inside and ensure that every inch of the mall could be searched unhindered.

The man rushed for the doorway, seemingly glad to have an excuse to run. As he left the mall through the glass doors, Tom jogged after him without really knowing why, other than his desire to be anonymous. Perhaps he had told someone he was somewhere else. Perhaps he just didn’t want to have his face on TV if they showed closed-circuit footage to jog memories.

As Tom got to the door he called out, “Hey, buddy.”

The man stopped and turned. He clearly noticed Tom staring at him and for a couple of seconds their eyes locked on one another. It wasn’t an aggressive staring competition brimming with machismo, but rather one of genuine curiosity.

Tom watched him leave the mall and show a document to a gendarme, who pointed him in the direction of a group of plain-clothes officers who were, Tom imagined, taking short statements and verifying ID. Just beyond, four black minivans pulled up, carrying, he knew, anti-terrorist police, or maybe specialist squads of Special Forces. Then an ambulance and a fire truck appeared, together with a second helicopter.

Minutes later, as the people thinned out, Tom saw a trickle of water coming from the male restroom. He didn’t believe in coincidences, so he decided to check it out. By the time he got to the door he could see that water wasn’t the only liquid emitting from the room. There was blood, too, no mistaking.

He thought about drawing his SIG, but that would cause panic and he’d likely spend the week in a cell. He pushed the door but it didn’t give at first. He shoulder barged it and, feeling the door nudge open he shoved harder, using his muscular legs. He managed to get it open wide enough to slide in.

The stench of death hit his nostrils, the sickly smell of fresh blood and the chocking odour of body waste. He gagged, seeing a body shrouded in what looked like a blood-stained sheet on the wet floor. Deciding this wasn’t a good place to be, he left.

As he prized open the door and inched out, he saw TSM talking to a big guy with a bulbous nose wearing a woollen overcoat. The guy could be a DCRI operative and the evacuation of the mall was almost complete.

Wait, he thought, TSM said that the target was wearing a white robe. Cursing himself for not checking the corpse, he considered that it could be the target, who could be Ibrahim.

Or that guy, he thought, the Westerner.

He bolted over towards TSM. But, instinctively, he knew he was too late.

Chapter 70

Ibrahim had passed through what he considered to be the cursory security checks, which he put down to his Western appearance. They hadn’t even taken a note of his passport number.

He walked for three blocks before heading for a nearby café. He flipped open the cellphone that he’d taken from the businessman. Shielding it as best he could from the downpour, he dialled a number, which he knew was a disposable cell that would be dumped afterwards. He hadn’t liked the way the man had looked at him in the mall. He hadn’t liked it at all.

He made a call to the Turkish mafia, requesting an emailed photo of the man they had held in Ankara, but who had escaped. He had a gut feeling.

He sat at an outside table, the canopy above dripping water and buckling under the weight. He ordered a coffee from a waiter in a crisp white shirt and black trousers, with knife-edge creases, who asked him in pidgin English what all the fuss was about. He said it was a security alert, although he didn’t know the details. When the waiter walked inside to get the order Ibrahim received an email on the smartphone. He clicked open the image and had to stop himself from widening his eyes and curling back his lips.

It was the man in the mall. The man called Tom Dupree, the special agent in the US Bureau of Diplomatic Security. A very capable and dangerous man, he’d heard from the Turks.

He made a second call, this time to a local number, but another disposable cell. Mohammed had given him the number of a small jihadist cell in the Paris suburbs, and the number was used exclusively for incoming distress calls. They could help out. They could follow people. They could make people disappear.

When it was picked up, he said, “I need the Somalis. Now.”

After he’d forwarded the email of the photo of Tom Dupree to the brother on the other end of the phone and had given them the address of the mall, he made a mental note to drop the cellphone down a storm drain. He’d take the notes from the wallet and dump that too.

He was on the move. But Tom Dupree would never leave France, he was sure of that.

Chapter 71

As Tom had expected there had been no sign of the Western man he had seen coming out of the restroom, no record of him, either. Lester had given a short statement like everyone else, but Tom had had to give a detailed one, and had had to give an address in Paris where he could be contacted again. TSM had stepped in then and the DCRI had cut Tom a little slack after the Frenchman had said he could vouch for him and that he’d be staying with him. After that they’d been held up for a further two hours by the chaos outside the mall, by the sectioned off street, and the traffic jams caused by the response and emergency vehicles.

Tom was driving along another Paris street now, with Lester riding shotgun, and TSM in the back. They were heading for TSM’s upscale apartment in Meudon. The municipality in the south-western suburbs of the city was built on a landscape of hills and valleys overlooking the Seine. But the spectacular views, a characteristic of the area, weren’t visible today. The rain was coming down in sheets, the sky a mass of charcoal-grey clouds, fat with moisture.

“We gotta tail,” Tom said.

“Are you sure?” TSM asked.

Tom thought it was an odd question, given his own credentials, and he’d seen the metallic silver BMW, an old model, following them since they’d left the street on which the mall was situated.

Lester spoke without turning around. “Anyone knows if we gotta tail, it’s Tom. Trained for it, ain’t ya, Tom?”

“It’s a silver BMW,” Tom said.

“Turn off the sat nav,” TSM said “I know some backstreets where you can lose them.”

Tom rechecked the rearview. There were two black men in the BMW, possibly more sitting behind. He decided to act.

As they got to a western side of the town, about seven miles from the centre of Paris, close to a large wood, Tom pulled up around a sharp left-hand bend. The street was lined with chestnut trees and limestone houses, with wrought-iron railings. They were all painted in various shades of beige, with black windowsills and original exteriors, houses that had been spared the terrible ravages of the Luftwaffe in World War Two due to Paris’s open city policy.

He asked Lester to take over now that they were close to TSM’s apartment and said he’d meet them back there. Lester protested, saying he’d go with him, but Tom said he wanted to know if they were after him, and he had a piece, so Lester shouldn’t worry, though he appreciated his concern.

He knew that if Lester went with him he couldn’t be sure they were after him. He didn’t tell Lester, because he didn’t want TSM to hear, that if the men in the BMW were after him, it meant that it was likely that the Westerner had sent them, and that meant he might just be Ibrahim.

But TSM hadn’t attempted to intervene, which Tom also felt was odd, given that he’d been so insistent about not using a weapon.

As Tom got out a wood pigeon flew over his head. It veered sharply to the right and up past the twelve-foot-high entry gates of one of the upscale houses as it became aware of him. A natural reaction, he thought.

Beyond the gate, flecked with ivy and dark green moss, was a gravel driveway on which were parked an assortment of prestige cars. Either side of the lawn were immaculate flowerbeds, pink dahlias and bright yellow sunflowers, nodding in the breeze, their petals soaked with rainwater. It wasn’t the type of neighbourhood to risk firing a handgun in, but then again, Tom thought, it wasn’t the type of neighbourhood where people would rush out brandishing their own weapons, either.

Strolling down the street he heard the staccato sound of the old engine that had once been a low purr behind him. He knew it was the BMW following him at a crawl. He decided to speed up and see how it would react, although in truth he knew how it would, an ambivalent mixture of exhilaration and anticipation careering through his veins.

As he came upon a side street, a young couple in their late teens emerged onto the road he was walking down, half a dozen yards in front of him. The curly haired, skinny male had his arm firmly around his even skinnier girlfriend’s waist. They were walking hip to hip, laughing and flinging their heads back. The girl had sleek black hair that cascaded down her back to her thin waist. They veered off into an alley and were gone in no time. Despite their obvious inability to act in any way that might assist him, their departure left Tom feeling oddly vulnerable, but he had set his store and he had no choice other than to keep walking.

Chapter 72

After a couple of minutes, Tom purposely walked down a cul-de-sac, where the elegant houses became more intermittent, and he slowed down again, hearing the BMW ease to a stop. He turned around to confront the occupants, without really weighing up his options. Vaguely, he made out what appeared to be a huge man in the driver’s seat, sitting beside a slight man, who looked as if he was East African, probably Eritrean or Sudanese.

The passenger got out, leaving the door ajar, and Tom saw that he was typically small-headed and long-limbed. He was wearing a black leather jacket, black jeans and black boots. The man walked over to within two yards of him, a blank expression on his face.

“What do you want?” Tom asked in French.