Inside the hotel lobby, a wilted chandelier burned too brightly.
“Chambre cinquante-deux,” he told the hotelier, his French passable.
“Soixante-neuf,” Sarah said a moment later, taking a place at his side. The hotelier turned and gathered the keys from their respective boxes. The lady received hers first, along with a friendly “bonne nuit.”
“You must be exhausted,” she said as they headed to the stairs. “How’s the shoulder?”
“It’s there,” he said, defying the insistent, and increasingly uncomfortable, throbbing. His room was on the second floor. “See you in the lobby at five-thirty,” he said as he left the stairwell and walked down the corridor.
“Five forty-five,” Sarah countered. “At that time of morning, we’ll make it to the bank in five minutes.”
As Chapel inserted the key into the lock, he had a portrait of Sarah in his mind. The excited brows, the perky smile, the way she’d raised herself on her tiptoes and had given him the coyest of waves. Spinning on a heel, he looked down the hall, wanting her still to be there. Not to invite her in. Not even to say good night. Just to double-check the expression. He had no idea whether or not it was sincere.
Seated alone in the third row of the first-class cabin, Marc Gabriel sipped at his mineral water and stared out the window into the infinite black sky. Flying relaxed him as nothing else. The gentle, constant throbbing of the MD-11’s Rolls-Royce engines lulled him into a pleasant, soporofic state that allowed his mind to ponder his varied challenges, slipping from one to the other, taking the objective view and analyzing each without fear or rancor or the frenzied immediacy that his current situation demanded.
Closing his eyes, he saw the gritty, mud-coated streets of Ciudad del Este, tasted the infernal damp heat that he adored, sniffed the choking exhaust that was every third world city’s curse. He was not worried about what he would find or that he would not be able to rectify the situation. He knew all the players and what they were capable of. One way or another, he would have his money. Absently, his hand rose to his jacket, feeling for his passport-an authentic Belgian issue listing him as Claude François, a forty-five-year-old resident of Brussels. It was the formalities that caused him concern. His mind ran ahead to the flight home, to the news of the U.S. Treasury agent’s murder, to his own meeting the next day with the Israeli professor and the divine moment when the package would be his.
Beneath his blanket, his fingers had found his cuff links. They were from Boucheron, gold with neat little batons of hematite or onyx or lapis lazuli that one could slip in and out. Delicately, he played with them, realizing how much he’d always loved them. There was no reason for it, other than that they had always seemed to him the pinnacle of Western fashion. In a few days, he’d have no need for them. His father abhorred Western dress. So had Marc Gabriel’s oldest brother, dead these twenty-five years, and the one who had started them all down this road. He had been the fanatic, the pilgrim, the puritan of the family.
So much death. So much sadness.
He allowed himself to mourn Taleel. His death was tragic, yes, but the transfer had been a priority. Withdrawing half a million dollars from a local bank was not a possibility. Notification would have to have been given days in advance; the funds wired in from one of the company’s secure accounts; arrangements made to gather the American currency. Naturally, the manager would have insisted on meeting him. He shuddered, thinking of the trail he would have left. He might as well have sent the Americans a telegram asking them to meet him at the bank and to bring their most comfortable handcuffs.
No, Taleel, he explained to the man’s departed soul. There was no other way. Your death was necessary, crucial even. Your actions have brought us one step closer. To the brink.
A sad smile cracked his lips. He would not mourn. Every soldier knows that one day his name will be called. It is the price of duty, the stamp of honor. If anything, he reminded himself, it was a time for optimism. Twenty years’ preparation was at an end. The day of celebration at hand.
“Sir, is everything all right?” An attractive flight attendant with dusky brown eyes knelt next to his seat, her hand brushing his shoulder. “May I offer you a glass of something?”
Gabriel realized he was crying. Sitting up, he wiped away the tear that had run down his cheek. “Most kind,” he answered, “but I think I will try to sleep a bit. Tomorrow promises to be a busy day.”
He knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep. Still, Chapel moved around the room, going through the motions. He took off his shoes and socks. He washed his hands and brushed his teeth. With a nod to Giles Bonnard, and maybe even to Sarah and her aversion to American “boors,” he took care to mind the crease as he hung up his trousers. His shirt was history-two tomato stains, a freckling of grease, and, yes, even a clip of onion. He didn’t have to worry about being a boor. He was a certified slob. Thou shalt not wear a white shirt to an Italian restaurant. It should be a commandment. Gingerly, he peeled it off, one shoulder at a time. A corner of the gauze bandage came loose, and for a moment he stared at the moonscape of burned flesh. It was another man’s shoulder: ravaged, frighteningly red, and coated with a gelatinous ooze. Averting his eyes, he replaced the bandage and pressed his palm firmly on the gauze. The pain washed over him in waves, and as it crested, he sank to his bed and groaned. The shoulder was his, all right. He had oceans to cross before it would be healed.
His medication sat on the night table, arranged in a row. Dr. Bac had prescribed ampicillin to prevent infections, hydrocortisone to arrest inflammation, and Vicodin to combat the pain. There were stronger painkillers, but not many, he thought as he shook loose a few tablets. He stared at the pills lolling in his palm, then dropped them back into the container.
Five minutes later, he was on the street in his jeans and a T-shirt, the bandage visible, but no one paying it much attention. He walked toward the river, his stride growing until he found his marching rhythm and locked into step. He passed the Café Aux Deux Magots, favorite haunt of a lost generation, tables packed, white-aproned waiters navigating the throng, trays held on high. Across the way, the church of Ste.-Geneviève-du-Mont’s four-square spire stabbed the sky’s soft underbelly. A plaque informed him that René Descartes was buried on the premises. Cogito ergo sum. I think, therefore I am. No, thought Chapel. He had it wrong. I act, therefore I am.
Crossing the square, he stared at the spire, at the narrow refectory windows, at the sturdy wooden doors, built, at least to Chapel’s eyes, to keep people out rather than allow them entry. In the morning, caskets holding the bodies of his fellow jump team members were to be loaded aboard a U.S. Air Force jet and flown to Andrews Air Force Base, from there to be dispatched to each man’s hometown. Keck to Falls Church. Gomez to Trenton. Santini to Buffalo. Which God would their families pray to? The benevolent deity who promised infinite kindness? The watchmaker who’d set the world in motion, then turned his mind to bigger game? Or the murderous mute who demanded belief in the face of extraordinary barbarism?
A glance at the sky, the capture of a single sparkling star, provided Chapel all the comfort he needed. Whoever or whatever made that-and something did, you could bet on it-would take care of him whenever the time came. It seemed to him that man ought to stop counting so much on God to look after him, and start relying a little more on himself.
The streets narrowed, grew quiet, a canyon of silence that suited him. For a block, he was alone, eerily so. A pair of footsteps not his own echoed behind him, and instinctively, he checked over his shoulder. A shadow blended into a doorway. Another late-night wanderer. He passed the commissariat de police, hitting the Quai d’Orsay two blocks later. More noise, but by then he didn’t care. His ear was turned inward, listening to the rumblings of his own troubled conscience. Crosswalks in Paris can be a half-mile apart. Chapel ran across six lanes of traffic, pulled up at the esplanade overlooking the Seine as a bateau-mouche slid past, lights blazing, one of the party boats-he could hear the bubbly chatter over the cars zooming past at his back. Over the thumping of his heart. He dropped a hand to his leg. Strong as ever. “The office is near the Métro. Mr. Chapel won’t have to walk far.” Fuck you, too, Leclerc, he murmured.