Drexler bowed to her. “Then I should begin preparations immediately.”
Shakira put a gentle hand on his arm now. “I don’t want anything bad to happen to you.” She kissed him, and he kissed her back. “How will you get into Europe?”
Drexler smiled at her in the dark apartment now. “I will wait for your husband to ask me to go on his behalf.”
He left Shakira standing there, alone, convinced she must have misheard him.
Shakira stayed at the window, watched another pair of bombs strike targets too far away to identify, then returned to the plush sitting area near the TV.
Soon she leaned back on the sofa and stared at the ceiling, tears formed in her eyes, and the wrath in her heart burned like acid.
* * *
? ? ?
In the first ten years of their marriage, Shakira and Ahmed al-Azzam had two children, both daughters. Azzam had demanded a son from his wife, so it was to Shakira’s great relief when she bore her husband a male heir shortly before her fortieth birthday. Ahmed Azzam could have chosen any woman in his nation to replace Shakira as first lady, and only when her son, Hosni, came into the picture did she finally feel secure in her place.
Having a male heir was paramount for Ahmed Azzam. There would be an election someday for Ahmed’s successor, but just as had been the case when Ahmed took the reins from his deceased father, the election would have only one candidate. When Shakira presented her husband with a son, everyone in the nation knew the palace would belong to the al-Azzams for another fifty years at the very least.
Shakira had felt secure for the first years after her son’s birth, but when he was five years old a routine medical checkup revealed an inoperable brain tumor, and Hosni died before his sixth birthday.
Ahmed was inconsolable about his son, but beyond mere grief was the realization that his wife was now forty-five, and even for the elite of the nation, five years of war had depleted the medical capabilities inside Syria.
They tried for another year to have a baby, and when they did conceive, the Azzams’ happiness was short-lived. Doctors confirmed she was pregnant with a baby girl, and the pregnancy was terminated soon after.
Ahmed was only fifty-two, so Shakira felt they would remain in the palace for decades to come. The two of them had decided that Ahmed’s thirteen-year-old nephew, the son of his younger sister, would someday carry on the Azzam dynasty, but neither the boy nor the parents of the heir apparent had any notion of this.
Shakira had been a crucial colleague to Ahmed in the palace, if not a true emotional partner, and she’d been the backbone of the Sunni coalition that fought on the regime’s behalf in the war, so Shakira felt safe in her place there. But all the security she felt faded away when Shakira found out that the woman her husband was bedding here in Damascus had secretly produced a male offspring, and he had given the boy the name Jamal, the name of Ahmed’s own father, the former leader of Syria.
Shakira did not begrudge Ahmed the affair itself. She’d been sleeping with the Swiss intelligence officer who worked in the palace since shortly after they met. But the anger that welled in her the instant she’d learned Ahmed had a son with Bianca Medina had only grown in the last few months, and she’d been plotting her next move for all this time. Shakira did not think for a moment that her cold and calculating husband would have allowed his mistress to become pregnant, much less to bring a child to term, unless he had plans for the woman and the child. Children were inconvenient, especially when born out of wedlock to national leaders in the Middle East, and Shakira knew her husband would have had Bianca killed the second he found out she was with child unless his goal had been to replace his wife and make his own child the third generation of Azzam to rule the nation.
Shakira could not let this happen, and the only way she could stop this, to save herself and her children from being cast from power, was to kill Bianca Medina. She didn’t believe Ahmed would throw his wife out of the palace if there was not both a mother and child to bring into the palace to replace her, so with Bianca dead, the baby would cease to be a threat to Shakira.
Then Shakira felt she could reassert herself by reminding Ahmed who truly ruled the presidential palace.
* * *
? ? ?
Sebastian Drexler was back in his office and thinking about his dangerous predicament at eight a.m. when his satellite phone rang. He snatched it up, hoping the caller was someone from his team working in Paris, and further hoping the caller had some actionable intelligence for him.
“Yes?”
“It’s Sauvage.”
“What have you learned?”
“We picked up the individual performing surveillance on Medina the day before yesterday.”
“Any resistance?”
“He came along. The kid’s name is Ali Safra. As I told you before, he’s a Syrian immigrant, a member of the Free Syria Exile Union.”
“Where is he now?”
“He’s in the trunk of Clement’s car. He confirms he was tailing Bianca Medina in the city, but he doesn’t know anything about a larger mission other than surveillance and reporting. He did say there was a meeting yesterday morning at Père Lachaise Cemetery, where the head of the Free Syria Exile Union met with a foreign asset, but Safra says he wasn’t anywhere near that meeting. I think he’s telling the truth; he doesn’t strike me as the type of guy you’d involve in the center of your plans.”
“He’s an idiot?”
“Just an immigrant with a menial job. No connections to anyone other than those in the FSEU.”
“Who is the leader of the Free Syria Exile Union?”
“According to the kid, it’s a husband and wife running it. They are surgeons here in Paris. Tarek and Rima Halaby. Mean anything to you?”
“Never heard of them. Have you run into them up there?”
“Negative, but we pulled their records from the EU crime database. They both have one arrest in Turkey for unlawful entry. Seems they got picked up crossing the border from Syria about three years ago.”
Drexler thought about this. “So they snuck over into Syria to help the rebels, and were grabbed coming back into Turkey.”
“Looks like it. What do you want me to do?”
“Find out where they are.”
“We have an address already. Here in Paris, on the Left Bank.”
“Do you think Medina might be held at their flat?”
“Doubt it,” Sauvage said. “It’s a nice place, right in the city center. And it’s their home address. They might be armed, they might have security, but this is no place to hold a captive.”
Drexler paused. He was about to up the ante in his relationship with his agents in the Paris police. “Hit it.”
A pause on Sauvage’s side now. Then, “What does that mean? ‘Hit it’?”
“Raid the location, be prepared for violence.”
“This is something you’ve never asked us to do.”
“You’re a cop. Isn’t that what cops do every day?”
Sauvage took his time, then said, “We can find a ruse to enter some other flat. Bring in some patrol officers to stand outside; make it look legitimate.”
“Send two of your men. Don’t go yourself. And this can’t be a straight police operation. We need to know where Medina is, and we won’t find out if the Halabys are in custody where we can’t get to them.”
“Pas problem, Monsieur. I’ll send Allard and Foss; they will question the Halabys on the premises. The other cops won’t know what they’re up to.” After a beat, Sauvage said, “We have not discussed compensation.”
Drexler replied, “All four of you will be paid double the agreed-upon amount.”
“Tres bien, for the raid on the Halabys. But what about the kid in the trunk?”
Drexler decided to push his luck, to see how far these men would go on this operation. “Make it where anyone looking for him never finds him.” After a pause, he said, “I’ll triple your compensation.”