Thin Line (17 page)

"Don't really consider ourselves as staying," Bear said. "Feels more like being held against our will."

Pierre stopped on the landing, turned, held out his hands. "Then feel free to leave. And realize that once you do, you will get not one ounce of support
from us. Your passports and the fake names you flew in on will be flagged in the system. Your faces will be plastered throughout our intelligence community
as individuals hostile to France." He paused. We didn't move. "Now, I'd prefer to think of you as guests of our unit. I think you'll find the provisions
and accommodations more than suitable. Again, please follow me."

We weren't in a position to rock the boat.

Yet.

So we continued on.

At the top of the stairs was a single door. Pierre unlocked it, and then handed me the key he used. A sign of trust, perhaps. Telling me that he wouldn't
invade our space. Of course, there had to be another key. There always was.

Beyond the door was a small living area with a kitchen and an island separating the rooms; two bedrooms; a bathroom with a stand-up shower I doubted Bear
would fit in. There was a small television. No phone. No computer. I pulled out the cell phone Frank had given me. No signal. I'd wait until after the
Frenchman left to check the other phones.

"Sorry," Pierre said. "Situations typically dictate that this area be silent. No outside communication is allowed. It won't be for long. Forty-eight hours
max. I promise."

"We don't know each other well enough for you to promise me anything," I said.

Pierre shrugged. "So be it. I think you'll find I'm true to my word, though." He then exited the room through the front door, leaving me and Bear alone.

"I'm not liking this, Jack."

"I hear you. It's not ideal, but they aren't holding us in a cell, so I say we roll with it for now."

I switched the television on. The picture was grainy, with static and a roving vertical band that was tinted blue. I pulled back the blinds to get a view
of what lay beyond the building. The only view I had was of a brick wall where a window should have been.

"No way out." Shaking his head, Bear rose and stepped into the kitchen. After rooting through the fridge, he returned with two beers. "Might as well have a
drink."

I took the bottle, cracked the top, and drank close to half of it on the first pull. It went down smooth. I could handle a few more.

Bear adjusted the dial on the television. He settled on a French twenty-four hour news station. I was born linguistically challenged, but the big man had a
knack for picking up foreign tongues. He sat on the couch and watched the feed intently.

While he caught up on world events, I investigated the apartment. Searched the bookshelves, mattresses, dressers, other furniture. As expected, I found
nothing. It wasn't as though they had to bug the place in a hurry. They owned it, which meant any surveillance equipment was built in. Could be in the
walls, TV, appliances, pictures. Too many places, so why worry?

I realized the situation was the same at the brownstone - we'd been looking for visible and traditional equipment. However, someone had gone through,
installed it within the structure of the building, and used technology that we weren't equipped to sniff out. When everything was done, I wanted to go back
to that building and perform a thorough search, perhaps with some new equipment. My contact Brandon could help with that. He knew people from every agency,
and was into bleeding-edge technology himself.

"Hey, Jack. Come take a look at this."

I stepped back into the main room. Bear pointed at the television. There was a picture of one of the women from the photos Pierre had shown us earlier. The
feed cut from the picture to a scene on a street. A blood-soaked sheet covered a body. A pale and slender arm stuck out, the hand clutching a small caliber
pistol.

"What are they saying?"

Bear cleared his throat. "The woman and a companion were dining on a café terrace when a group of men approached. The woman and her associate remained
seated while the men surrounded them. There was some shouting, and a few shots were fired. One of the men collapsed. The others carried him to a waiting
van. As the men left the scene, onlookers saw the woman on the ground, and her friend face down on the table. Both had blood pouring from holes in their
heads."

"Who was the friend?"

Bear shrugged, pointed at the television. "They're only talking about the woman we saw in a photo earlier."

I picked out a few words uttered by the reporter, but not in any kind of organized manner needed to make sense of them. The news channel began showing
still images.

"These are from CCTV," Bear said. "They've started incorporating some of the same things you find over in London and South Korea with the cameras." He
paused, then added, "They didn't say that. My observation only."

I studied each picture for as long as it remained on the screen. I recognized faces from the pictures Frank and Pierre had shown us. Absent was al-Sharaa.
Expected, considering his role within the group. One picture stood out. It was taken from the direction the men had approached from, and swept past the
café terrace. The photo had caught a man exiting a store, looking to the left.

Staring at the unfolding scene.

"Christ," I said.

"What?" Bear said.

"Brett Taylor." And then the picture changed again to a crowd of people gathered around the two dying women. "We've got to get a hold of that photo."

"How?"

"Pierre, or Frank… I don't friggin' care how we do it. We need it in our possession so someone can analyze it. And we need every photo snapped from
that same camera before and after that moment."

Bear kept his focus intently on the television screen. "Don't see what difference it would make, Jack."

It made every difference. "That photo along with others would put together a timeline. Which direction he went after exiting the store. Which direction he
came from to enter it. What he was doing prior to going in."

The newscast cut to a commercial, allowing Bear to re-channel himself. "I got you. Sorry. Was still looking for anyone else we might know in the footage."

I waited for Bear to continue.

"So, you think he might have come ahead of time, maybe as a spotter for the terrorists. He saw the woman dining on the terrace and called it in after
slipping into a store."

I shrugged. "Possibly. It's that, or he was dining with the woman and her friend, or her associate, whoever she was, and left to get something from the
store. It was sunny. Maybe he went in and bought those sunglasses he was in the process of putting on."

"In which case, he was pretty lucky, again, that he wasn't around when the guns showed up."

"There's one thing that doesn't jibe, though, Bear."

"Pierre - and Frank for that matter - thinks all of these people were working together."

"They might have been. Perhaps the woman was working with someone-"

"The associate."

"-and giving up secrets."

Bear rose and walked past me on the way to the kitchen. He opened the fridge and fished out two more beers. He cracked them open and discarded the caps
into the garbage can. They bounced around the unlined can a few times.

After taking a pull from the bottle, Bear said, "What the hell we gotten ourselves into this time, Jack?"

I shrugged, laughed, said, "You surprised? Frank's been dragging me into these kinds of messes for a couple of years now. It was one of the driving forces
that led me to resign my position in the SIS."

It had been a surprise that they let me walk away and rejoin the civilian world. Of course, the release did not come without strings attached. Although
Frank technically
asked
me to do jobs for him, there was no option to decline. The guy kept a file on me, and if he ever decided to turn it over
to anyone outside our shadowy world, I'd go away for a long time. And so would he, because I'd roll over on him, too. It created a tenuous relationship, at
best.

Bear set his bottle on the table, then leaned back, throwing his thick arms up in the air and letting them come to rest behind his head. "So, what do we do
now?"

"I guess we wait for Pierre, unless you know of a way out of here."

"I think we're probably safest right here."

I laughed. "When did safety become a consideration?"

Bear joined me. "I guess never." He lowered his arms and crossed them over his chest. "Christ, Jack, I dunno. Don't like this. Don't like it one bit."

Before I could respond, the door behind us whipped open and cracked against the wall.

BEAR AND I hopped off the couch and spun to face the man who'd burst into the apartment. We both held our beer bottles like projectile weapons, ready to
launch. Liquid poured from mine, half landing on the floor, the other half on my shoe.

Pierre stood in the doorway, arms out, raised in front of his chest as if to thwart our attack. Out of breath, he coughed while trying to inhale. I
wondered if he'd sprinted from another location.

"We have to go now," he said.

"Go where?" I said.

"We have to move on them." Pierre took a step in, chest heaving, rapidly forcing air in and out. "They'll be gone by midnight, and I'll have wasted two
years on nothing."

"Why'd they kill the French woman?" I asked.

Pierre shook his head. "I don't know. How do you figure she's French?"

"A guess."

"The pictures on the news, you have access to them?" Bear asked.

"Yes, and I'm having Laure pick them up right now. She should be here any minute."

"It'll be all the pictures?" I walked around the couch, set the empty bottle on the kitchen counter. "We need to see what happened before the incident."

The Frenchman had caught his breath. His voice was still tight, terse. "I'm sure we can get them, but I don't know what good that would serve."

I glanced at Bear. The big man gave me an almost imperceptible shake of his head. I decided to keep the ace up my sleeve and not tell Pierre about Brett
Taylor's presence at the café. It was only fair, as it was obvious Pierre wasn't sharing everything he knew.

"We need to be armed," Bear said, "if you expect us to take part in anything tonight."

"I've got everything you need downstairs. Body armor, sidearms, suppressed HK MP7s, night vision, communications." Pierre assumed our involvement. He
turned and exited the room.

We followed him down the stairs and across the hall into the situation room. Bodies filled the pods. Fingers danced across keyboards. The monitors that
lined the wall blurred with data. One of the interrogation cells was occupied. A lone Middle Eastern man sat hunched over the table, hands tied behind his
back. His lips trembled with prayer. His body rocked a few inches back and forward. The other cells would be occupied in time. The only question I had was
where would they place the overflow.

Maybe they didn't plan on having any.

Pierre waved us over to where he was standing. A woman waited next to him. She was tall and lean, with strawberry blonde hair that didn't match her olive
complexion. One of the two had to be fake. She said her name was Laure.

The four of us moved to Pierre's office. After he'd taken position behind his desk, Laure placed photos on the table. I anxiously awaited the picture of
Brett Taylor exiting the store while a group of alleged terrorists surrounded one of their own. I wanted to see where Taylor had been when the shots were
exchanged.

She dropped the last picture and said, "This is everything they had at the station."

"No, it's not," I said.

"Beg your pardon?" her English was crisp, neutral in accent, like she'd spent a lot of time in Washington D.C., or some other melting pot area.

"There's one missing."

"I'm afraid you are mistaken."

"I saw it on the news broadcast. The men had surrounded the woman and her associate. They stood around the table, hovering over their prey, right before the
shots were fired."

"What does it matter?" Pierre said. "We know what happened then, as well as right before and after. I agree with you, Jack, that we need to see the events
that unfolded prior to the group's arrival, but we don't have that evidence at this time. I'll get someone on it."

The time wasn't right to mention Taylor's appearance, so I said nothing. When we had the pictures, I'd bring it up. I switched the topic to the plan for
tonight's activities.

"We were still in the planning phase," Pierre said. "We have the layout of the house, and we know the identities of most of the residents in the
surrounding area. But…"

"What?" I said.

"Across the street, and two houses to the right…" He pushed away from his desk. "We're unsure about them. Could be spotters."

"How much extra manpower can you get?" I said.

"Another ten." He shot Laure a look. "Maybe fifteen."

"Send a team into each house, through the back. Lock them down."

Pierre continued to stare at Laure. She shrugged. After a moment, they both nodded.

"I'll get everyone activated." She brushed past me on her way out. Her shoulder felt like a stone knife against my chest.

Pierre slid forward and began tapping on his keyboard. A few strokes and clicks on his mouse were followed by the whirring of his printer. The machine lit
up and began spitting out paper. After it finished, Pierre rose and gathered ten or so sheets and brought them back to his desk. In the same manner that
Laure had laid out the photos, Pierre spread the papers on his desk. When he was done, we were staring at the blueprints of a house.

"Three stories and a basement," he said. "Exits in front and back. Fire escapes from every rear window. Obviously this is a row home, so no way out on the
left or right side."

"Unless they own the houses to the side and broke through."

Pierre shrugged. "Unlikely, even if they own them. Those are brick firewalls."

"Man can break through brick," Bear said.