“At present she is alive. I have a plan to—”
“There was a shoot-out in Mezzeh tonight. In Western Villas. A man escaped. It’s on the news, and I’m having my staff bring me updates from GIS.”
Drexler was utterly confused and had no idea how this related to him. “Wait. What man? What are you talking about?”
“They are saying this man kidnapped a baby after fighting security forces! He killed several Ba’ath security officers, and more NDF forces that chased him until he disappeared.”
“Who was the baby?” Drexler asked, but he knew the answer.
“On television they aren’t saying anything about the identity of the victims, but they wouldn’t, would they?”
Drexler’s eyes closed and squinted shut, and he gripped the phone just as hard. He understood now, understood even better than Shakira what was going on. “A highly skilled killer who can slip into Syria and kidnap the child of the president. There is only one person who fits that description on this Earth.”
“Who is he?”
“They call him the Gray Man. He is American.”
“What’s he doing in Syria?”
“Apparently, he was working for the Halabys.”
Shakira gasped. “The man who rescued Bianca in Paris?”
“One and the same. And then he went to Damascus to rescue her son.”
Shakira said, “Once Bianca is dead, this won’t matter. He can put the kid on CNN for all I care. Ahmed won’t admit to being his father.”
Drexler did not reply.
“When will you do it? When will you kill her?”
“I am told we will fly to Serbia in the morning. There we will wait for documents to be sent to us so we can continue on to Russia. From there we’ll come home. I’ll take care of everything before we leave for Russia.”
“You had better,” Shakira said.
Drexler passed on a few more promises to the first lady that it would all be over soon, and they would be together again. Then he hung up the phone and looked up to see Henri Sauvage standing over him.
Drexler wasn’t in the mood. “What?”
“Why am I still here? I have done every last thing you asked.”
Drexler knew Malik was the only one who could release Sauvage at this point, and Drexler figured the only reason Malik had not released Sauvage already was that Malik was going to shoot the French cop in the head at some point and dump his body in a muddy field, simply to tie off one of the many compromises of the past week.
Drexler said none of this. Instead an idea came to him. “Henri . . . you might not know it, but you are crucial to this operation, and you are in a position of power right now.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“The next phase, you might have gathered, involves getting Medina back to Syria. To do that we have to travel across Europe. I do not have credentials that can pass scrutiny, and neither does Malik. Unlike me, he is here in Europe legally, but as soon as Rima and Tarek are found dead in that house, men with Syrian diplomatic credentials traveling across Europe are going to be looked at with the highest suspicion.”
“What does this have to do with me?”
“You are a French citizen and a law enforcement officer. If you came with us, you could facilitate any dealings we had at airports, with chance encounters with police or others. You could go out and purchase supplies, rent cars, things of that nature. Logistically you would be a tremendous help.”
“And in the process I would incriminate myself even more into this crime?”
“My dear captain, at this stage of the game I imagine you are already in as deep as you could possibly be. Why not make, say, another one hundred thousand euros in the process? That money could help you as you transition your life to someplace safer for you.”
Sauvage just stared Drexler down. Finally he said, “Two hundred fifty thousand euros.”
Drexler didn’t imagine Henri Sauvage would see fifty cents of this money they were discussing, so this was purely a hypothetical conversation. But to the Frenchman he said, “Two hundred. This will be two days of work. Three at most. Then you can have the rest of your life.”
Sauvage did not look happy, but Drexler doubted this man ever looked happy. He nodded slowly. “Fine. But three days at the most and then I return.”
“Agreed.” Drexler didn’t really need the Frenchman along on the journey; he could tend to any logistical arrangements himself, using his powers of persuasion and charm, but he saw how Sauvage could prove useful.
A plane would land at the airport in a few hours and it would only accommodate four people apart from the pilot. That was Drexler himself, Malik, Medina, and one other person. The Swiss operative would find himself in the air with fewer threats around him, and more opportunity to deal with Bianca Medina.
If Drexler managed to kill the passengers and crash the plane, and if Sauvage’s charred remains were found in the wreckage of a smoldering aircraft crashed on a mountain or somewhere along the way between here and there, and if in said remains Drexler’s watch, glasses, and other personal effects were found, then Shakira would think Drexler died along with Medina.
This would satisfy Stefan Meier at the bank, it would satisfy Shakira Azzam, and it would more than satisfy Drexler himself.
Just as Drexler had used the dead body of the Finnish photographer to get into Europe, he would use the dead body of the French police detective to finally free himself of Shakira Azzam.
Now the only real concern he had was to figure out where the hell he could find a parachute between now and when he boarded the plane in the morning.
CHAPTER 54
Court had Saddiqi drop him off three hundred yards from the hole in the gate of the Desert Hawks’ base, and he went the rest of the way on foot.
He made it through the hole after five minutes of prizing open the metal links, then belly-crawled through the dirt behind the shack next to the motor pool. He brushed himself off and then, when he felt sure the coast was clear, he ran across the street. He then made his way in the shadows through row after row of metal buildings until he arrived back at the KWA barracks.
Infiltrating the facility turned out to be as easy as exfiltrating, if not more so, because there was so little going on in the area at four a.m.
He saw that the lights were off in the team room, and he slipped inside, heading to the back for the barracks.
The lights were off in here, too; a dozen men lay in their bunks, and some snored.
As Court moved to his own bunk he was surprised to see that both Saunders and Broz had already made it back to base after getting picked up by the cops and National Defence Forces militia. He did not see Brunetti or Anders anywhere in the room, but he wondered if Brunetti’s broken nose might have had something to do with their absence.
He sat down on his bunk and pulled off his shirt, shoving it in his backpack. Just as he leaned over to untie his boots, he heard a banging on the back door of the barracks. KWA men all around him leapt up out of their bunks, grabbing rifles and pistols as they did so.
Saunders was first to the door and he looked out, then unlocked and opened it.
Four Desert Hawks officers moved into the room aggressively, and behind them, several armed militiamen. The mercenaries in their underwear leveled their guns at the new arrivals in the confusion, and shouts were exchanged.
Court saw from the action of his teammates that, whatever the hell was going on, this was definitely not a nightly occurrence.
The overhead lights came on, and Court was in the center of the action, standing there shirtless; his lean upper torso had several scrapes and bruises he’d picked up in the past few hours.
Van Wyk, the South African KWA team leader, addressed the Desert Hawks colonel angrily. “What the hell is this all about?”