By some unspoken agreement, their conversation never touched on the events they had recently experienced, nor did they discuss what lay ahead. Rather, they made small talk about likes and dislikes, favorite books and hobbies, anything and everything, so long as it had nothing to do with the matter weighing most heavily on their hearts. When their dessert was cleared away, they agreed that it was easily the best meal they had ever eaten, though in fact neither of them could remember now what the main course had been. Arm in arm, they left the restaurant and made their way back to the rooms.
Kismet was not surprised at all when Marie took his hands, stared up into his eyes and whispered, “I don’t want to be alone tonight.”
But much later, when she lay sleeping nestled against his body, his mind wandered over all the pieces of the puzzle that just didn’t quite fit, and he found himself wondering if he really knew who she was.
Part Four: Curtains
Sixteen
He spied them as they entered the terminal building and quickly ducked into a place of concealment until they passed. “Nick Kismet,” he whispered, staring at the receding figures. “There is a God.”
He began to follow, maintaining a casual pace so as not to attract unnecessary attention. The pair moved with no particular haste into the duty-free area. He found a telephone kiosk where he could continue his surveillance and waited for them to emerge. As he waited, he considered what his next move would be.
The woman — he didn’t know who she was, and didn’t really care — was Caucasian, but had dressed in an elegant but modest dress with a matching head scarf, and from a distance was almost indistinguishable from the handful of Arab women who also roamed the vast facility. Kismet’s attire was similarly nondescript. He wore a simple suit and might have passed for a visiting oilman or journalist, but for the bandages swathing his hands.
After browsing the duty-free shops but making no purchases, the pair moved back toward the heart of the airport complex. Their unnoticed observer followed, gradually closing the distance as contemplation fanned his smoldering rage into a blaze of indignation.
They purchased food from one of the concessions and moved to a table in the center of the seating area, as if intentionally seeking the protection of open space. He bought a soft drink and took a seat in the corner, facing the departure gates, with his back to them. Their voices were sometimes audible, and while he couldn’t make out their conversation, one word emerged from the ambient hum: Paris.
Leaving his half-empty cup on the table, he moved into the terminal to make new travel arrangements.
The desert fell away beneath the fuselage of the Kuwait Airways Boeing 737–306, and with it, Nick Kismet felt the macabre gravity of the place loosening its grip on his soul. For a second time, this desolate place had tried to kill him, and while he had once more eluded the Reaper’s grasp, he was nevertheless marked by the encounters with scars that ran much deeper than the damage to his flesh.
Chiron’s treachery remained an open wound in his heart. He could not help but revisit his memories of each and every encounter with the old Frenchman, from that first meeting on the bank of the River Gave to their reunion in the Baghdad Airport, wondering if it had all been a deception leading to this end. The Frenchman had always presented himself as a pacifist rather than a patriot. It seemed almost inconceivable that he had been some sort of agent provocateur, awaiting the orders that would lull him from clandestine sleep to commit acts of sabotage in the interests of French national security. No, it was far more likely that his motives were immediate in nature. His alliance with the DGSE had to be more a marriage of convenience than a mating of sympathetic ideologies. But how had the scientist profited from the cover-up?
He glanced at Marie, seated beside him and evidently napping, and wondered if Chiron’s executive assistant held some piece of the information that would further illuminate the puzzle. For reasons other than courtesy, he decided not to rouse her.
Though he had not yet revealed it to her, he was apprehensive about confronting Chiron on French soil. He had little doubt that the authorization for the mission to destroy the detonators had come from the highest levels of government. Eliminating any witnesses to existence of those weapons and their fate would be imperative to national security. There was a very real possibility that the DGSE would simply make Kismet and Marie disappear.
As the flight crew began the drink service in the steerage class, Kismet rose and made his way toward the commode, more out of a desire to keep moving than any real need to use the facilities. A week of living on little more than adrenaline had left him almost perpetually on edge. If the claustrophobic confines of the plane, with its dry recycled air and pervasive humming machinery, offered little solace, the tiny restroom, barely bigger than a coffin, promised none at all. Nevertheless, he moved inside and gently eased the bi-fold doors closed.
Suddenly the door burst open and someone pushed inside. The intruder’s shoulder slammed into his back and forced him against the bulkhead. The commode platform struck him just below the knees and knocked his feet out from beneath him. Before Kismet could move, a hand snaked over his shoulder and snared his right wrist. His arm was pulled up across his throat and his assailant’s forearm pressed into the back of his neck to form an almost unbreakable chokehold. Kismet rammed backward with his left elbow, but the blow glanced ineffectually against the man’s torso, while the pressure against his airway doubled. Dark spots started to swim across his vision. The unseen attacker had, with almost minimal effort, rendered him completely helpless.
Then, mercifully, the death grip relaxed, if only by the merest fraction. He felt hot breath on his neck, and through the ringing in his ears, heard a voice low and harsh. “Give me one reason why I shouldn’t kill you.”
Through his growing panic, Kismet felt a pang of disbelief. He recognized the voice; he knew the attacker. From the corner of his eye, he could just make out the image of the man who held him, reflected in the stainless steel mirror mounted above the lavatory. Despite the civilian attire, he had no difficulty identifying the man. “Buttrick?”
“Good men died because of you, Kismet,” rasped the Colonel. “Those boys would still be alive if I hadn’t let you talk me into that damn fool mission. They were my responsibility, but their blood is on your hands.”
“You know that’s not true.” He barely had the breath to form the words.
There was an interminable silence, as if Buttrick was weighing the merit of his argument, then the pressure returned. “Not good enough.”
“Wait!” Kismet’s plea was choked, but a moment later Buttrick relented again, allowing him to speak. “We’re after the same thing: the person who’s really to blame for what happened. Believe me, I’ve got a lot more reason to want revenge than you. But if that’s not good enough, then how’s this: Let me go, or you’ll spend the rest of your life singing soprano.”
Buttrick glanced down and saw a weapon — a polycarbonate knife — pressed into his groin. The composite of man-made polymers and glass fibers was marketed and sold as a letter opener but had been designed with a somewhat more nefarious purpose in mind: the non-metallic blade was invisible to airport metal detectors. Though he had been compelled to check both his kukri and his sturdy Emerson CQC7 folding knife with his luggage, Kismet always kept the polycarbonate knife clipped to his waistband whenever he traveled by air. Until this moment, he had in fact never used it for anything more illicit than opening his mail. He pushed the blade just hard enough for the other man to feel the point through the fabric of his trousers.