The Ambler Warning

He was way past the irony of having to fight for his life on the grounds of a cemetery. Père-Lachaise was more than that: it was a giant game board, a fretwork of paths and lanes and monuments that could serve as obstacles or as points of attack. His enemies were arrayed in a network upon a network.

  He needed to gain access to that network. Racing from one tomb to another, he was attracting less attention than he would have expected.

  He had to think—no, he had to feel, to let his instincts guide him. How would he have arranged the team, if it were up to him? He’d have some of the SSG team in offensive positions, others merely taking up observation posts, to be deployed offensively only as a last resort. He had to use his peculiar skills—his comparative advantage—in his own defense, or he would die here. And he had come too far for that. Overwhelming his fear was the one emotion that was even more powerful: rage.

  He felt rage at what had been done to him, starting in Changhua. Rage at the attempt to rob him of his very soul in the sterile environs of Parrish Island. Rage at the arrogance of the strategists who deployed human beings like so many pawns on a chessboard of geopolitics.

  He would not die here. Not now. Not tonight. Others would die. For those who would kill him would be shown no mercy.

  He raced down a lane signposted CHEMIN DU QUINCONCE, over an area of sodden turf to another cobbled walkway, the avenue Aguado. He was now nearing the northwestern section of the vast cemetery, approaching a large chapel in a Moorish style, with a round dome over a huge portico. In fact, it was a columbarium, a building erected to house cinerary urns. In front of the main entrance was a steep staircase leading to an open subterranean vault, like a dark, rectangular chasm.

  Here was a place of refuge that could equally serve as a lethal snare. It was impossible that the SSG team would have left it unattended. Perhaps sixty feet away was what looked like a semi-enclosed arcade, a pillared walkway of limestone and slate. Tarquin darted into it, his eyes swiveling rapidly. To his left, he saw a Japanese man with a pocket-sized digital camera and a malevolent gaze. Tarquin did not give him a second thought; the tourist was annoyed because Tarquin had just ruined his shot. A young blond woman and an older man, olive skinned and graying at the temples, were standing in the next alcove, in something less than a full embrace; she was gazing soulfully at him, while his eyes darted toward Tarquin anxiously. Yet it was not the anxiety of someone determined to see; it was the anxiety of someone determined not to be seen. Perhaps the man was cheating on his wife or—this being France—cheating on his mistress, worse still. The adjoining pair of alcoves was vacant. In the next one, a broad-faced woman was reading what looked like a book of poetry. She glanced up at Tarquin briefly, registering no obvious interest, and returned to her reading.

  It was a ruse that would have been more persuasive ten or fifteen minutes ago, when the light was still adequate to read comfortably. The woman had a broad, masculine face, and her thick legs were planted with a bend in the knee, in the manner of a trained operative. He saw her slip a hand into her nylon parka, as if for warmth. Any doubts Tarquin might have had vanished.

  For the moment, however, he could not reveal that he knew. Instead, he deliberately kept his gaze straight ahead as he turned into her alcove. He moved as if he had noticed something through the bay and was straining to see. As he passed her, he suddenly veered, crashing his body into hers, and the two of them tumbled heavily to the stone flooring. He twisted her body as they fell, and thrust the muzzle of the silenced Beretta against her throat.

  “Not one word,” he said.

  “Fuck you,” she hissed, drawing in breath through her clenched teeth. Another native speaker, then. Her broad face was distended like that of a snake preparing to strike.

  He rammed his knee into her stomach, and she gasped. There was fury on her face, much of it directed toward herself, toward her own failure to have anticipated his move. Tarquin grabbed her book—Les fleurs du mal, the cover said in maroon type—and opened it. As he expected, a miniaturized radio transmitter was lodged in a rectangular space carved out of the pages. “Tell them you have seen me,” Tarquin whispered. “Tell them I have ducked down into the underground vault of the columbarium here.”

  Uncertainty flickered in her eyes, and he pressed ahead: “Otherwise I will leave your corpse there to join the others.” He jammed the muzzle of the Beretta harder against her throat, and he saw her break. “You try anything, I’ll know,” he warned her.

  Pressing a button on the transmitter, she said, “Constellation. Constellation Eighty-seven.” The cemetery was divided into ninety-some areas; the chapel was in the middle of Division Eighty-seven. Tarquin was relieved that she did not identify herself as 87A or 87E—a complication that would mean others, too, had been positioned in his division.

  He grabbed the small wireless earbud in her right ear and placed the flesh-colored piece of plastic in his own.

  “What’s your report?” the metallic voice crackled through the earbud. He nodded to the woman.

  “He’s hiding in the underground vault,” she said.

  He whispered into her ear, “And he’s armed.”

  “And he’s armed,” she added.

  They already knew that; her volunteering the detail would make it even more likely that her report would be credible. Now he yanked down the woman’s nylon coat, trapping her arms.

  A loud voice from the central walkway: “Mam’selle. Il vous ennuie, ce mec-ci?” Is that guy bothering you? A well-meaning question from an uninvolved passerby. Tarquin stole a quick glance at the man. He was thin, gangly, with an officious expression and a scholarly air—a student at a local university, perhaps. Impressions were formed in a split second, Tarquin knew, and could be erased in another. He pressed his face to the woman operative, mashing his mouth against hers. “My darling,” he called out in English. “So the answer is yes! You’ll marry me? You’ve made me the happiest man!” He pitched his voice in the tones of exaltation and joy, clutching her passionately. It did not matter whether the Frenchman spoke English; the import would be clear enough.

  “Excusez-moi,” the man said quietly, reddening and turning on his heel.

  Tarquin wiped his mouth on his sleeve and turned to what looked like a small tool case clipped to her belt. He unhooked it, knocking away her hands as she grabbed for it.

  He recognized it at once: a Kleinmaschinenpistole—a folding machine gun known as “the businessman’s subgun.” The deadly device was based on a stamped-metal weapon developed by the KGB design bureau in Tula, the PP-90, and could discharge its entire load in a near instantaneous burst, like a death ray of lead. It was a marvel of miniaturization: the trigger guard was hinged; a spring-loaded catch controlled the folding of the weapon. It was just ten and a half inches, with a magazine that held thirty rounds of 9mm parabellums. On a corner of the metal oblong object was a spring-loaded button. When Tarquin pressed it, one part of the metal case swung to the rear and became a buttstock.

  Then, without warning, he whipped his arm back against her neck and forced her head forward into the crushing vice. She would be unconscious for several minutes. He propped her body on the marble bench, letting her head loll back against the wall, as if she were napping. Now he removed her shoelaces and made a loop that encircled her left ankle, ran twice around the steel unguarded trigger of the subgun and then around both wrists. As soon as she attempted to stand or straighten herself, the loop would tauten.

  He moved to another alcove, a few hundred feet away, that was now darkly shadowed but permitted a view of the steps that led down to the columbarium.

  He did not have long to wait.

  The first on the scene was the same leather-jacketed youth who had retrieved his backpack. Now he was racing down the steps into the columbarium, a hand inside his jacket, as if clutching his stomach. A bald middle-aged man with a pitted face and a large belly was next on the scene. He did not descend but rather stationed himself near the chapel, at the far end of the staircase. He
could look down and see the landing below. A sensible backup position.

  A third man arrived two minutes later. It was the second of the two men who had grabbed Tarquin as he tried to leave the cemetery. His face was reddened and glazed with sweat, from anxiety or the physical exertion of running or both.

  Tarquin heard a low tone from the small, rubberized earbud and then the metallic voice again. “Constellation Eighty-seven, confirm subject remains in position.” Tarquin, his eyes peeled on the sweat-slicked man, saw that his lips were moving as the voice was transmitted; obviously it was his voice, transmitted by means of a hidden fiber-optic lip mike.

  A look of perplexity traveled across his face. “Constellation Eighty-seven, come in,” he said.

  Tarquin leveled the silenced Beretta on the stone ledge of the nearest bay, peering through the deepening gloom with a sinking feeling. Even if he had been a champion shooter—and he was not—the distance was too great for an accurate hit using a handgun. The odds were greater that he would give his own position away than that he would bring down a member of the assault team.

  He waited for one more member of the team to appear in Division Eighty-seven—that was almost half of them, now—and then stealthily made his retreat, sliding through a low bay and then through a bramble-ridden area of the quadrant to his north. He could see a guardhouse, the large map for tourists, the tall dark green gates that let onto the city proper. If he squinted, he could see the faded green and white awnings of a Paris street. Its seeming proximity was deceptive.

  From a distance, he heard a clattering burst of automatic fire and startled shrieks of alarm. The poetry lover had roused herself; the thirty rounds would have been harmlessly discharged into the stone depression beneath the marble bench. To the operatives in the area, however, it would act as a homing beacon, drawing them toward an apse-like space he had long abandoned.

  Moving faster, he hurried past countless tombs and statues, leafless trees and rustling evergreen bushes, even as shadows lengthened and the setting sun’s rosy glow began to ebb, like an expiring flame. His muscles were coiled, his senses on full alert. His ploy had, in the tradecraft jargon, “reduced the pressure” of the hostile forces, yet others would remain in position, scouting the terrain with binoculars. The danger was especially acute at the points of egress, such as the one he was approaching. It would be natural to place sentries at such locations.

  He put on another burst of speed. He stumbled briefly on the uneven ground, cursing inwardly, and then he felt, rather than heard, the double tap: another spray of stone, sharp stinging fragments. Had his stride been steady—had he not stumbled—one of those bullets would have struck him in the upper body.

  Tarquin rolled to the ground and ducked around a six-foot-tall obelisk. Where was the shooter? Again, there were too many possibilities.

  Another silenced spray of stone—this time from the opposite side. The side where he had sought refuge. Where was safety?

  He whipped his head around; given the obstacles that surrounded him, the angle of the shot was too low to have come from any distance.

  “Stand up like a man, why don’t you?”

  Cronus’s voice.

  The burly operative stepped out of a shadowed space behind a large memorial stone.

  Tarquin desperately scanned the area in front of him. He saw the back of an oblivious green-uniformed maintenance worker, Père-Lachaise Équipe d’Entretien stenciled in white along the shoulder area and on the back of the visored cap. Through the tall green gates—so close and yet a million miles away, it seemed—Tarquin could hear the faint bustle of a Paris street in the evening. A thinning array of tourists—the light was too dim to take good photographs—were unaware of the lethal game of possum that was in progress.

  Cronus’s pistol was trained on him; Tarquin could try to grab for his Beretta, yet the long silenced muzzle would add a fatal split second to the time needed to remove and deploy it.

  All around him, the business of everyday life proceeded as usual. The groundskeeper or sanitation worker, or whatever he was, kept at his trash picker, his face shadowed behind the visored cap. The tourists started to flow through the gates, looking for taxis or figuring out where the metro station was, chatting among themselves in jaded end-of-day voices.

  Cronus signaled to someone across the way—the sniper, Tarquin inferred. “Don’t worry about our marksman friend,” Cronus said, in a voice of freezing malevolence. “He’s just playing backstop. The kill is mine. Everyone knows that.”

  The sanitation man was steadily working his way along the ground, moving closer, and Tarquin found himself worrying that his movement could be restricted by his presence. The groundsman was uninvolved, a bystander, though Tarquin very much doubted whether the distinction made much of an impression on the likes of Cronus. For a moment, Tarquin had a hovering sense of danger—something about the way the man walked.

  Suddenly a shaft of light from the setting sun dazzled off the windshield of a passing car, and for an instant the groundsman’s face was illuminated. Tarquin felt another jolt of terror. He remembered the Plaza swimming pool. The face he had glimpsed at the Luxembourg Gardens.

  The Chinese assassin.

  His odds of survival had plummeted further.

  “The thing you’ll never understand, Cronus,” said Tarquin, desperately trying to buy time, “is that—”

  “I’ve heard enough out of you,” the burly man said, his finger curling around the silenced pistol. Abruptly the expression of hostility left his face, replaced by an oddly vacant look.

  At that same instant, Tarquin became aware of a plume of red droplets that had erupted from Cronus’s left ear. The Chinese man had dropped to one knee, the trash picker in his hands replaced by a long silenced rifle. It had happened so rapidly that Tarquin could only make sense of the events retrospectively.

  The Chinese man whirled around, toward Tarquin, and squeezed off a shot—and for a moment Tarquin wondered whether this was the last thing he would ever see . . . except that the man was peering through the scope and a professional did not peer through a scope to fire at a target fifteen feet away. Tarquin heard the plink of an ejected cartridge.

  The assassin was not firing at him but at the sniper.

  Tarquin’s mind reeled. It made no sense.

  The man before him aimed his rifle again, peering through the scope. Only someone extraordinarily skilled would attempt to hit a concealed sniper from a free-form firing position, matching the stability of a bipod with the frame of a squatting human being.

  A double tap: two plinks—two more cartridges ejected. From some distance, Tarquin heard a moan of an injured man.

  The green-uniformed marksman rose from his crouching position and folded the stock of his rifle.

  Tarquin was dumbfounded, dazed with incomprehension and disbelief.

  The assassin was letting him live.

  “I don’t understand,” Tarquin said to him numbly.

  He turned to Tarquin, his brown eyes solemn. “I know that now. It is why you are still alive.”

  Tarquin looked at him anew and saw a man who was doing what he believed duty demanded, a man who took pride in his formidable skills but no pleasure in their deadly consequences. The man was, in his sense of himself, not so much warrior as guardian; he knew that throughout human history there had had always been men like him—whether praetorian prefect, Knight Templar, or samurai—who turned themselves into implements of steel so that others would not need to. Men who were hard so that others could be soft. Men who killed so that others could live safely. Protection was his watchword; protection was his creed.

  A split second later, the Chinese man’s throat exploded into a cloud of blood. The unseen sniper, however badly wounded, had at least one more shot in him, and he had trained it on the man who posed the greatest threat to him.

  Tarquin sprang to his feet. For a brief interval—and only for a brief interval—the other assailants would be a safe distance awa
y, impeded by the stones and sepulchers of this garden of death: he had to seize the opportunity or lose it forever. He charged toward the double green gates adjoining the street, not stopping until he found the rental car he had left on a nearby block. As he veered through the clamorous Paris traffic, taking pains to be sure that he had not been followed, he tried to process what he had learned.

  The elements jostled and collided, tearing at his consciousness. Someone had killed Fenton. Was it a member of Fenton’s organization—a mole of some sort? Was it someone Fenton worked with—someone in the United States government?

  And the Chinese assassin: an adversary who had become an ally—indeed, someone who had given up his life to protect Ambler.

  Why?

  Who—who was he working for?

  There were too many possibilities, too many impossibilities that had become possibilities. Tarquin—no, he had to become Ambler now—had reached a point where conjecture could be actively misleading.

  Something else, too, frightened him: the wash of adrenaline had not been a wholly unpleasant sensation. What kind of man was he, after all? He shuddered, contemplating his own character. He had killed and nearly been killed this evening. Why, then, did he feel so alive?

  “I don’t understand,” Laurel repeated. All three of them were gathered in Andrew’s oatmeal-bland hotel room.

  “I don’t, either,” Ambler said. “None of this feels right.”

  “It doesn’t add up,” Caston put in.

  “Wait a minute,” Laurel said. “You said the killings were all linked to China. You said it looked like a progression, a sequence, like it was leading up to something imminent. You figured that Liu Ang was the probable target.”

  “He’s supposed to be visiting the White House next month,” Caston said. “Big history-making thing, with dinners of state and all that. Plenty of opportunities. But . . .”

  “But what?”

  “Timing seems wrong. There’s too much of a delay, given the previous specifications of event density.”