*
Before Gideon and Bathsheba left the apartment, Elie repeated his instructions. They were to watch Abu Yusef’s boy toy go in, wait until he came out, and follow the green Peugeot back to the Arabs’ hideaway. But under no circumstances were they to raise any suspicions. If there was any disturbance, they must return to the apartment immediately.
“ If you think he noticed you,” Elie said, “drop the tail and return here. We’ll get him on his next visit to the bank in Senlis.”
Gideon was curious to know what made Elie so certain about future money transfers, but kept the question to himself. He had learned from experience that Elie Weiss divulged only the information he absolutely had to share.
*
Lemmy kept on the coat, fedora, and gloves. He scouted the enormous store, up and down the escalators, across each wing, in and out through different entrances. Avenue Haussmann, a six-lane road with heavy traffic and no legal parking, offered four pedestrian entries into Galeries Lafayette, with hundreds of shoppers coming and going continuously. Rue de Mogador was a side street that passed between the two blocks of the store. It was lined with cars in which husbands and chauffeurs waited. He spent a few moments examining a wall map of the store to memorize several alternative escape routes through various fire exits and loading docks.
Standing inside the store behind the glass doors, Lemmy watched customers being dropped off and picked up on Rue de Mogador.
At 2:43 p.m., a white Citroen arrived. Lemmy recognized Elie’s young agents-the man with a head of curls and the woman with sharp, beautiful features and close-cropped hair. They remained in the parked car.
The minutes passed quickly. By 3:12 p.m., Lemmy was concerned. He would not wait for the green Peugeot more than thirty minutes beyond schedule.
Inside the white Citroen, the driver kept watching the street in his side mirror.
Another ten minutes went by. Lemmy felt the Mauser through the side of his coat. Was Elie’s information wrong? Could this be a trap?
The couple in the Citroen began arguing. The man shook his head repeatedly. The woman suddenly bolted out of the car and ran down the street to the corner of Avenue Haussmann. Lemmy stepped closer to the glass doors to watch her. She glanced left and right over the railing that separated the sidewalk from the traffic. As she turned, her expression changed, her pace slowed to a casual stroll, and she stopped at a window display. Lemmy looked the other way and saw a green Peugeot coming down Rue de Mogador. It stopped at the curb near the entrance.
The driver was a Middle Eastern man, about fifty. He unfolded a newspaper and began to read. There was no passenger in the car, and Lemmy realized the target had been dropped off at the main entrance on Avenue Haussmann. He was already inside!
A flight of stairs led to the main level. Lemmy passed the counters displaying Chanel, Estee Lauder, OrLane, Shiseido, and Monteil. He circled the line of women at the cashier and took the escalators up, two steps at a time.
Crossing the ladies’ shoes area, he noticed Paula’s favorite-Lundi Bleu.
Another set of stairs to the right.
Menswear.
He passed Yves Saint Laurent, and turned left.
Red-and-white sign: Pierre Cardin.
The salesman at the counter smiled.
Lemmy slowed down, looked away, pretended to browse through a rack of shirts, and approached the far end. A few customers pecked at the long racks of suits in shades of gray.
Around the corner was a line of dressing rooms. One curtain was shut.
His right hand slipped through the slit and gripped the ivory handle. He aimed the Mauser under the coat, barrel forward, pressed to the hip, the silencer parting the coat lapels. His finger slipped into the trigger slot.
Shifting the curtain with his left hand, Lemmy saw a fur hat on a hook, a green coat, and a thin man in white briefs, his back to the curtain, his leg raised, poised to slip into the pants.
Lemmy’s finger started pressing the trigger.
The target must have sensed the movement behind him. He straightened and turned. “ Pardon,” he said in a voice surprisingly soft. “I’m almost done.” His body completed the turn, and he looked at Lemmy, no more than a foot separating them, smiling with shiny teeth against olive skin. It was a familiar smile, but there was no stopping now. The Mauser coughed twice.
The target’s smile crumbled into a mask of terrible fear, which soon slackened into the familiar paralysis of approaching death. Two bullets, aimed to pass through the heart and lodge in the spine, instantly disabled the capacity for physical reactions, including the ability to expel a final scream. His body lost its firmness. He collapsed on the small bench and dropped to the side, resting against the wall, his eyes open wide.
Lemmy shut the curtain, collected the two casings from the floor, and walked along the racks to the back stairway. Down one floor, he turned left at the sign Sortie – Reserve Au Personnel and pushed through a fire door. Down a set of gray-painted service stairs, left again, he jogged through a long, dim corridor. A pair of steel doors let him out onto a loading dock on Rue de Provence, a few steps from the bustle of Avenue Haussmann.
The target’s smile flashed in Lemmy’s mind. A ghost from the past.
No past! You’re Wilhelm Horch! A banker!
He paused at the corner. No sirens. No screams. No fools trying to give chase.
A moment later he was across the street and inside the door to the parking garage. He took the stairs down.
The Porsche waited where he’d left it.
His body began to shake. He doubled over. His knees grew weak. He took a few deep breaths, waiting for the sick feeling to pass. The image of the teenager’s face stayed with him, switching between smiles and death masks. The dark eyes glistened, then went blank.
Back in the car, he unscrewed the silencer, repacked the Mauser in the storage compartment, and tapped the cover back into place. He took off the trench coat and fedora, removed the fake goatee, and stuffed everything behind the seats.
As he drove out of the parking garage, two police vans raced toward the Galeries Lafayette, sirens whining. He merged with traffic in the opposite direction, slipped Stravinsky into the CD player, and with the first tunes of The Rite of Spring, his breathing slowed down.
He lowered the window and cold air filled the car. It had been a fluke of nature-the target’s eerie resemblance to Benjamin Mashash, whose face Lemmy had not seen in decades, whose face by now must have matured greatly from the face of the eighteen-year-old Talmudic scholar, Lemmy’s study-companion and best friend, back in the Neturay Karta sect in Jerusalem, a divided city on the eve of a great Mideast war.
He stopped at a traffic light and shut his eyes, recalling Benjamin, whose eyes squinted in laughter, teeth white against the olive skin, ringlet side locks dangling on both sides of his earnest face.
Oh, Benjamin!
*
“ You’re early.” Elie Weiss pointed to his watch. “What happened?”
Gideon slumped in a chair. “A bunch of police cars appeared, a whole swarm of them, and Bashir split.”
“ You followed him?”
“ He drove too fast. We couldn’t keep up without being noticed.”
Bathsheba paced back and forth. “We should have waited right there. Bashir has to return to pick up the boy. He has to!”
“With all that police activity,” Gideon said, “we couldn’t stick around.”
“Was there a fire in the store? Or an accident?” Elie lit a cigarette, keeping a straight face even though he knew what the arrival of police cars had meant. The job had been executed-successfully, no doubt, because Jerusalem Gerster never failed.
“ Whatever it was,” Bathsheba said, “we’re back to square one.”
“ We’ll catch them soon enough.” Smoke petered out of Elie’s lips with each word. “The next transfer to Senlis is our hook.”