“I do. Not all here. But I brought a sampling to show you I’m serious.” He slowly reached in his pocket and pulled out an official-looking press badge and a ticket to the president’s upcoming speech at a Paris hotel.
Adolph looked at them, impressed. “C’est bon. Bien fait!”
“I have five more of these,” Shaw added. “Plus you will be included on the official VIP list.”
“Weapons?” Adolph asked.
“The French aren’t as paranoid as the Americans. VIPs don’t get run through the detectors.” He looked at the snarling skins. “But you have to look and act like VIPs.”
Adolph laughed. “These are my personal bodyguards. We grew up together on the streets of Paris. Each one of them would gladly give up his life so that I would live. I am the chosen one. They all understand that.”
Shaw looked at the dragon skinhead. Yep, he looks stupid enough to die for this megalomaniac asshole.
“So you’ve got others to do the deed. And look the part?”
Adolph nodded. “When can we have the rest of the documentation?”
“As soon as my price is met.”
“Ah, now we get to that.” Adolph sat back, crossed his legs, and blew a circle of smoke toward the warehouse ceiling thirty meters above them. “I will tell you up front, monsieur, we don’t have much money.”
“I thought I made it clear that I’m not interested in money.”
“Everyone says they’re not interested in money until they ask for it. We are not drug dealers or desert terrorists grown fat on oil. I do not have billions of euros in a Swiss account. I am a poor man with rich ideas.”
“My father died in a French prison last year.”
Adolph sat up straighter and looked at Shaw with some interest now. “Which prison?”
“Santé.”
The man nodded and crushed his cigarette with the heel of his shoe against the cold concrete floor. “That is one of the worst. And French prisons are for shit anyway. Several of our men reside in Santé now, their crime only that of cleansing the streets of filth. And for that, they are locked up like animals? The world is insane.”
Behind Shaw the dragon skinhead let out a grunt.
Shaw turned to look at him and watched as another gob of spit hit near his shoe.
Adolph said, “Victor’s brother was also one of them. He committed suicide at Santé last year. You were very close to your brother, weren’t you, Victor?”
Victor let out another grunt and racked his shotgun.
“I’m sure they were very tight,” said Shaw dryly.
“So your father died in prison. For what crime?”
“My father was an American who immigrated here to start a business, a business that became competitive with several others run by friends of Benisti, too competitive, in fact. So when Benisti was a prosecutor for the government he framed my father for a number of crimes he never committed, just to ruin him. It was all lies and Benisti knew it. My father spent twenty years in that hellhole and on the eve of his release he died of a heart attack. A broken heart. Benisti as good as put the knife through his chest.”
“And if we check your story out, we will find it is true?”
“I speak the truth,” Shaw said emphatically, his gaze leveled on the other man. “Otherwise I would not have walked in here.”
“So you want revenge. That is all?”
“Isn’t it enough? I give you the information, you kill Benisti.” He paused. “And someone else,” he added slowly.
“Who?” Adolph said sharply.
“Benisti’s father. He cost me my father, I will now take his.”
Adolph sat back and considered this. “I understand that he is also guarded.”
“I have it all planned out. I have spent years planning it out.” He looked around at the skins. “These men can do it. It only requires a little courage and a steady hand.”
“And how did you come by this intelligence? That interests me greatly.”
“Why?”
“Because it has been rumored that Benisti is not above setting traps, that is why.”
Adolph motioned to his men. They seized Shaw, pulled off his jacket, and stood him up. Victor pulled out a knife and slit open Shaw’s shirt, checking for a wire. They pulled his pants off doing the same. After a search that would have made a proctologist blush with its intimacy, Shaw was allowed to put his clothes back on.
“I’m surprised you waited until now to search me,” Shaw said as he buttoned his shirt.
“What would it matter if you were a poseur and wearing a wire? You would be dead anyway. And I would be long gone before the idiots showed up here.”
“They could have surrounded this warehouse,” Shaw pointed out.
Adolph smiled patronizingly. “No, no, monsieur, they could not come within ten blocks of here without my knowing. The gendarmes, they control the parts of Paris where the tourists go, but not here I think, monsieur, not here.”
Shaw sat back down. “I am close to Benisti. He trusts me.”
“Why, after what he did to your papa?”
“He doesn’t know the man was my father,” Shaw said simply. “I left France, changed my name, assumed a new identity, and then returned. I do his dirty work behind the scenes. Oh, he trusts me, like a son. I think about the irony every day.”
“Your hatred is inspiring.”
“Do we have a deal?”
“Vive la revolution, monsieur.”
CHAPTER 40
ANNA FISCHER WAS IN HER OFFICE at The Phoenix Group building where she continued to pore over the documents that littered her desk. She actually now had more questions than answers about the Red Menace. And every day, sometimes every hour, a new revelation would burst to the surface like the aftershocks of a tsunami, and the earth would shake.
What bothered Anna the most was that there was no face, no name behind the R.I.C. Press releases were done over the Internet exclusively. No one had come forward and said I am the R.I.C. And with the murder of Petrov, and the attack on Afghanistan, Anna could perhaps understand why. Gorshkov had stated very clearly that whoever was behind this was going to be punished, and there were few nations on earth as good at punishment as the Russians.
Had this somehow backfired on the people who had perpetrated it? Were they running scared, unsure of what now to do? Anna couldn’t answer any of those queries. All she knew was that the effort had been extraordinarily well planned. Yet was it for benign or evil motives? She could understand the benign argument; Russia after all did not have an exemplary track record on human rights and there were many people and organizations out there that would love to put them in their place. The evil side Anna had a more difficult time conceptualizing. What purpose would be gained by turning Russia into an even more isolated and paranoid country? It would be akin to giving North Korea free nukes and telling them to fire away.
She rubbed her temples. She couldn’t spend all her time on this. Yet she was certain lots of other people across the world were doing the same thing right now. Someone had to find the truth at some point.
She checked her watch. It was nearly three o’clock. There was a firm-wide meeting today and all the staff was required to attend. She wasn’t looking forward to sitting through what usually turned out to be a boring discussion. But at least she had a half hour to work on something of importance. And then this evening she had something still more critical to do.
She was going shopping for her wedding dress. Her in a wedding dress? Anna smiled at the thought and her skin actually tingled. The only thing better would be seeing Shaw in a tux. She had no doubt he would carry it off wonderfully.
With the world in crisis, it seemed ludicrous to be thinking about dresses and weddings. On the other hand, if the world were going to blow up sooner rather than later, she had no desire to wait to legalize her relationship with the man she loved.