“Crying is not manly, Anwar, so stop it, now!”
Anwar choked back his last sob and looked up, his right eye puffy, his left one nearly closed.
Waller smiled. “I must reveal something to you. You will find it of interest I’m sure. We located your wife. We have Gisele.”
“You have her?” said an astonished Anwar.
“And I agree with you, she is a she-devil. A woman designed by God to drive men insane. Would you like to see her, tell her what you think of her before we kill her?”
“It would give me great pleasure,” muttered Anwar unenthusiastically.
“Or perhaps you would like to do the honors? A bullet to the brain of the evil woman? It may do you much good. A catharsis. A character builder.”
Anwar flinched. “I am an accountant. I have no courage for that.”
“Fine, fine. I just thought I would extend the offer.” Waller turned to one of his men. “Pascal, bring the woman in to face her wronged husband.”
Pascal, a small, trim man in his thirties, passed through another door. A few moments later the door opened again and Anwar could see his wife’s head peering around the doorframe. Normally her skin was even darker than her husband’s. But now she looked terribly pale, her eyes wide in stark terror.
“You miserable bitch. You devil. See what you have caused. You have… you have…” Anwar faltered as the door opened farther and Pascal marched in holding the severed head by the dark strands. Pascal didn’t smile at the horror on the husband’s face. He just clutched the back of the head and held it up, as he had earlier been instructed to do by his employer.
“Oh God. Oh God. No, no, it cannot be.” Anwar looked at Waller, then back to his wife’s head. “It cannot be.”
“It is, Anwar. It is. But now you can return to work a happy man.”
Anwar sobbed for a few more moments before lifting up his head and letting out a tortured yet relieved breath. “Thank you, Mr. Waller. Allah thanks you.”
“I have no need of your Allah’s blessings, Anwar.” Waller raised his pistol and aimed it at the man’s head, his eyes first focused on the metal nub of the sightline on the end of the muzzle and then onto the ultimate target.
Anwar jerked back. “But you said—”
“I lied.” The bullet torpedoed into Anwar’s brain. Waller relaxed and then triggered another round, tattooing the skin just to the left of the first entry wound. He placed the fired gun on the table and took a few moments to pour one more finger of scotch. Drinking this down slowly as he walked across the room to reach the door, he turned back and glanced at two of his other men.
In an admonishing tone he said, “Just remember this time that a two-hundred-pound man needs twice that weight to hold the body properly underwater.”
“Yes sir, Mr. Waller,” said one of the men nervously.
“And melt down the damn gun.”
“Right away, sir.”
“And Pascal, get rid of that,” he added, pointing at the woman’s head. “Cheers.” Waller disappeared through the door and settled into a black armored Hummer that sped off the moment he buckled his seat belt. An Escalade followed with another Hummer in front of Waller’s ride.
He’d discovered that his “trusted” accountant had a slush pile siphoned from Waller’s substantial cash flow. It was minor skimming, less than a tenth of one percent, and had done Waller no financial damage, but it was an unforgivable act. To let it go would have been a sign of weakness. In Waller’s business your competitors and people who worked for you were constantly looking for any signs of frailty. If they thought they’d found it, your mortality rate went up a thousand percent. He understood that lesson well, since it was how he’d come into the business many years ago. His mentor had let a minor slight go by with no consequences. Three months later he was being eaten by wolves in the Pacific Northwest and Waller was in charge. Over the next two decades, there had always been consequences whenever someone had betrayed him. He had no desire to be devoured by wolves. He would much prefer to do the eating.
He looked at the person sitting next to him. Alan Rice was thirty-nine, a graduate of a prestigious university in England, who’d traded the halls of academia to help Waller run his empire. Some men were just drawn to the dark side because that’s where they could thrive properly.
Rice was slender, his hair prematurely white. Though his features were delicate, his mind was muscular, brilliant. Men like Rice were seldom content to be second-in-commands. But he’d also helped triple the size of Waller’s business in a short period of time, and Waller had given him additional responsibilities commensurate with his talents. Waller was the only indispensable one in his business, but it was close to the point where he could not run it without Rice.
Waller flexed his gloved hand.
Rice noted this movement and said, “Recoil on the pistol bad?”
“No. I was just thinking about the last time I’d killed someone.”
“Albert Clements,” said Rice promptly. “Your Australian point man.”
“Exactly. It makes me wonder. I pay them extraordinarily well, and yet it never seems to be enough.”
“You have thousands, you want hundreds of thousands. You have millions, you want tens of millions.”
“And they must think I’m a fool to let them get away with it.”
“No. They just think they’re smarter.”
“Do you think you’re smarter than me, Alan?”
Rice looked over his shoulder at the building they’d just left. “I’m more intelligent than the man you just killed, if for no other reason than I have no wish to die at your hands. And I would if I tried to fool you.”
Waller nodded, but his expression wasn’t quite as convincing.
Rice cleared his throat and added, “I understand that Provence is beautiful this time of year.”
“There are few times when Provence isn’t beautiful.”
“You’ve spent much time there?”
“My mother was French, from a little town called Roussillon. It’s the site of some of the largest ochre deposits in the world. Many famous painters, like Van Gogh, traveled there to obtain the earthy pigments for their palette. And unlike many other villages in Provence, the buildings are not white or gray stone but wild reds, oranges, browns, and yellows. If I were a painter I would move to Roussillon and capture its images using only its colors. We had happy times there, my mother and I.”
“Have you been back as an adult?”
“Not to Roussillon, no.”
“Why not?”
“My father died there when I was twelve.”
“What happened?”
“He fell down the stairs and broke his neck.”
“An accident?”
“So they believe, yes.”
Rice looked startled. “So it wasn’t an accident?”
“Anything is possible.”
“Then your mother…?”
Waller placed a large hand on Rice’s narrow shoulder and squeezed a little. “I didn’t say my mother, did I? She was sweet and good. Such an act would’ve been unthinkable to the purity of her soul.”
“Yes, I’m sure. Yes, I understand.”
The orbital ridges around Waller’s eyes seemed to deepen. “Do you understand, Alan?” He removed his hand and pulled a note from his pocket. “I see that a young American woman is leasing the villa next to mine.”
“We just found that out. However, I doubt she poses a threat.”
“No, no, Alan. We don’t know what she poses yet, do we? The proximity alone is enough, is it not, to raise questions?”
“You’re right. I will find out all that I can. So will you visit this Roussillon? Is it far?”
“Nothing in Provence is really that far.”
“Then you will go?”
“Perhaps I will.”
“Just don’t become a victim of some accident yourself.”
“Please do not concern yourself for me. My father was careles
s and weak. His son is not.”
CHAPTER
13
YOU TALKED to her, didn’t you?” asked Frank.
Shaw looked up from the papers he was studying. “Who?”
“Don’t play stupid. Katie!”
“How’d you know?”
“Because your head has been in your ass the last few days. If I’d known you’d be like this I never would’ve given you the damn number. So how did she sound?”
“Fine.”
“What’d you two talk about?”
“What the hell is it to you?”
“Nothing. Whatever. Excuse me for giving a shit. Okay, back to Evan Waller.”
“I don’t like the plan. It has too many holes.”
Surprisingly, Frank nodded. “I agree with you. What do you suggest?”
“Simplifying it. Events on the ground tend to complicate things anyway. Start simple, then if things get hairy they’re still manageable. You start out complicated and things go to hell, it’s not good because there are too many pieces that can go wrong.”
“We know where he lives in Montreal, but taking him there has never gotten authorization from higher up. Too public, too much collateral damage potential, and the guy never keeps to a schedule there. He moves like a ghost, always varying his route and routine.”
Shaw said, “Then we have to find one moment in time in Provence where he does keep to a schedule and the collateral damage is minimal.”
The two men looked at the floor plan of the villa where the human trafficker would be staying. On the wall was a plasma screen containing more data, including all roads in and out of the target area.
Frank clicked a button on a control pad on the table in front of him and a set of pictures came up on the large screen. “He always travels with these guys, all major kick-ass types. And that’s the ones we know about. There may be more as backup.”
“He’ll advance-team the site, lock it down, and then sit on it,” added Shaw as he studied the bodyguards, each one looking tougher, meaner, and more capable than the last. “How reliable is the intel on his travel itinerary?”
“Very. We got it off phone chatter, email, and company credit card transactions.”
Shaw looked up. “Americans? They’ve got the best hard- and software for that.”
“Let’s put it this way, I owe the heads of NSA and CIA a really nice meal.”
Frank pulled out some docs and read over them. “His flight plan was filed. He’s flying from Montreal to Paris in his private wings. Refuel and then on to the airport at Avignon. Short hop in the bird. He typically travels in a three-vehicle motorcade. He’s got car rentals reserved in Avignon.”
Shaw pushed a button on the laptop and another picture came up, an exterior shot of the street where Waller’s rental was located. “There’s a villa next door.”
“Already leased to someone.”
“Who?”
“Did a prelim. Tourist. Looks absolutely clean.”
“Right next door, though?”
“Gordes is a very popular destination and those villas are in high demand. We couldn’t exactly stop them from being leased without raising a big red flag. But it doesn’t matter. We’re not doing the snatch in Gordes. Too much collateral damage possibility.”
Shaw looked at another computer screen that gave a partial itinerary for Evan Waller. He sat up straighter. “How do you know he’s going to the caves at Les Baux-de-Provence?”
“He had to get special permission for the tour and we accessed that data.”
“Why? Isn’t it open to the public?”
“Well, our Mr. Waller wanted a very private tour. Closed off to the public. To make that happen he paid big bucks. The place is in private hands. They can do what they want. When we saw the payment going to them we hacked their computer system and found the schedule. So we know the exact date he’ll be there.”
Shaw swiveled in his chair to face another computer whose hard drive was clean except for factory-loaded software, including a browser. They used it to connect to the Internet. He hit some keys and read over the results. “Okay, I’ve actually heard of this place. It’s a photo-exhibition gallery; light show on the rock walls, a narrated tour, recorded documentary, yada yada. They choose a different artist each year.” He sat, mulling this new information over. “I think we have our extraction location.”
He spun the laptop around and let Frank look at the screen. It was information about the exhibition venue. “The caves have one entrance, lots of rooms, and few attendants, so it’s easy to get lost or disoriented. We cut the power source and the extraction team is already in place with optics and one-shot-and-drop tranquilizer guns. We separate the boss from the muscle and off we go.”
Frank thought about this. “Limits collateral damage too. We’ll need eyes on the ground ahead of time to confirm all the details.”
“No argument there. But what better place to take a rat than in a hole?”
“But if the hit misses at the caves the guy’s going to be on his private wings out of France.”
Shaw sat back. “It’s not perfect, but it’s the best we can do under the circumstances. His trip to the caves is the only time we’ll know for sure where he’ll be going. And I really don’t see how we can miss.”
CHAPTER
14
THE EXTRACTION PLAN was in place. The caves had been gone over thoroughly by assets on the ground in Provence. Shaw would also visit the caves when he got there. In the meantime he had studied detailed plans of the caves’ exterior and interior until he could draw them out on paper from memory. Waller was scheduled to travel there less than a week after his arrival; his private tour began at 10 a.m. sharp.
After each long day of work, which included handpicking the members of the hit team and prepping them, Shaw would go to his hotel, change, do his run, and then wander the streets of Paris alone until the darkness thickened and his energy waned. One night he was eating alone at a café across from the Jardin du Luxembourg, a place Anna Schmidt had loved. They’d walk through the gardens, hand in hand, watch the children sail their wooden boats in the large central fountain, and then sit and observe people drift by. He couldn’t go back there now because for him it was hallowed ground that could not be trod on again. But he had ventured close enough to see some of the flowers from a distance. That was the best he could do before his chest started to tighten and his eyes moistened.
He’d just ordered his food when he looked around the restaurant, checking each table. A decades-long habit, it was as natural to him as drawing breath. He drew a quick one when he saw her standing there in the doorway that separated one dining area from another.
Katie James didn’t look as thin as the last time he’d seen her, which was good because she’d needed to put on some weight. Her naturally blonde hair, spiky and dark the last time they’d been together, had grown out and now nearly touched her shoulders. She had on a white skirt, two-inch heels, no hose, and a dark blue long-sleeved blouse. He’d never known her to wear a sleeveless shirt, primarily because of the bullet wound on her upper left arm.
As she walked toward him he could see that her makeup did not quite cover the darkened circles under her eyes. She was a beautiful woman; many men in the room turned their heads to stare, incurring the wrath of the ladies with whom they were dining. Yet apparently a glimpse of Katie James walking across the room was worth the risk.
She didn’t wait for him to extend an invitation; she simply sat down across from him. “You look good,” she said. She eyed his hair. “A little gray?”
“A little. You look all the way back. Put on a few needed pounds. Although I kind of liked the dark, spiky hairdo.” He paused. “How did you know where I was?” He answered his own question before she could. “Frank. What’s his interest? I’ve never known him to care one way or another about my personal life.”
“I don’t think he did until Anna was killed.”
“He told me you called him.”
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“I wouldn’t have had to if you’d ever called me back.”
“I’m sorry I walked out on you.”