Donovan smelled wet diapers.
Then he realized it was Gauloises, vile smelling French cigarettes, in the hotel conference room he, de Waha and Maccabee had just entered. Through the hazy smoke he saw his colleagues, the security directors for each G8 leader. This was their final pre-Summit review.
“Donovan, Jean, mes amis!” said Philippe Tournier, the slender, dark-haired director of Commissaire Divisonnaire of the GSPR, the no-nonsense, ninety-person secret service group protecting the French President, Samuel de Batilly.
“Welcome back, Donovan,” Philippe said, shaking hands.
“Thanks, Philippe” Donovan said, happy to see him and the others. Over the years, he’d developed excellent working relationships with most and considered them competent professionals and trusted friends.
“Gentlemen, meet Maccabee Singh. Her father, Professor Sohan Singh, translated the Sumerian message that uncovered this plot. And, as you know, he paid the ultimate price for that.
The group stood and took time to offer their condolences.
“Maccabee is continuing his work. She’s translating a recently intercepted Sumerian message that is much longer. So hopefully it will contain information that can help us stop Stahl. One warning though. She speaks most of your languages fluently – so please try to control your usual lewd and lascivious comments.”
“I like lewd and lascivious,” Maccabee said.
The directors smiled and seemed to relax.
“Let’s begin,” de Waha said.
Everyone sat around the long, mahogany table. Donovan watched their eyes grow dark as their ominous assignment descended on them like a thick black cloud.
“First of all,” de Waha said, “be aware - we face a brilliant, ruthless adversary. His birth name is Valek Stahl, but he’s also known as Katill and by several aliases, such as Horst Speerman, Pierre DuMaurier, Ernst Fleisher, Axel Braun and others, as you’ve read in his Interpol profile. We assume he’s already here in Brussels. Our only photo of him was taken seven years ago from a distance of seventy-five meters. That low-res photo is now being digitalized and age-enhanced by computers to give us a higher resolution photograph of him. Even so, chances are he’ll be in disguise, something he’s very good at. Wigs, collagen implants, plastic noses and so forth.”
Philippe Tournier said, “I heard Stahl once posed as an elderly nun in a wheelchair and killed two Israelis hiding in the convent.”
“True. He also killed the Mother Superior and the priest who hid them.”
Werner Vogler, the tall, handsome director of the German Chancellor’s security team, raised his hand. “Does the situation with Stahl change any of our security responsibilities?”
“No,” de Waha said. “You each have yours, protecting your leader. We have ours. Belgian Security still has overall G8 responsibility. We’ve brought in 12,000 federal and local uniformed police, plus 1,000 security guards who’ve set up perimeters around the leaders and their events. In addition, we have several thousand army and national guard troops ready to control any trouble from protest demonstrations.”
“Which ones do you expect trouble from?”
“The usual suspects. The anti-capitalists groups, the anarchist groups, the anti-war, anti-world hunger, anti-Wall Street and the anti-everything groups.”
“That many groups?” Tournier asked.
“Yes. They’ve promised to show up.”
“How polite of them to warn us.”
“Yeah. And of course, Donovan and I will be working in liaison with each of your secret security teams protecting your national leaders.”
De Waha turned to Donovan. “Donovan will now fill us in on what we know.”
“Which is damn little,” Donovan said, leaning on the table.
For the next twenty minutes, he explained everything he knew about the plot. Maccabee showed them a copy of an ancient Sumerian note and asked if they’d seen or heard about similar messages. No one had.
After Donovan finished, the group reviewed the security for each Summit event, identifying potential gaps of security and how those gaps had in theory been closed. When they finished, Donovan sensed they were well prepared for the most likely and predictable attacks: automatic weapons, explosives, biological and chemical weapons.
There was only one problem.
Stahl never did the predictable. His previous attacks were unique. Donovan feared the man had come up with another undetectable, unpredictable weapon delivery system. A one of a kind system so ingenious they might never suspect it.
De Waha stood up. “Breakfast in this room at 6:30 tomorrow morning.”
The group nodded and left.
Donovan, Jean and Maccabee walked down to the elevator.
“I’m expecting the pictograms I need from the USA any minute,” Maccabee said. “I’ll go work on the Sumerian message. If all goes well, I should have the message translated by morning.”
“Terrific.”
“What if I translate it sooner?”
“Call my cell immediately. No matter what time.”
“I will.”
“I’ll walk you to your bodyguard.”
“Thanks.”
Jean de Waha tapped Donovan’s shoulder. “When you’re done, meet me in the bar. I’m concerned about tomorrow’s palace dinner.”
“Okay.”
The elevator opened. Donovan and Maccabee went up to her floor and got off. Ahead he saw Theo, the muscular guard, a former pro rugby player, seated beside her door.
Theo wore a dark-blue suit stretched tightly over his thick chest and shoulders. His short brown hair and steel gray eyes gave him a no-nonsense military look. In fact, Donovan knew that Theo was Belgian Special Forces member who’d trained with the US Navy SEALs at Virginia Beach. And rumor was, he’d once singlehandedly wiped out four Al Qaeda terrorists planning to blow up a US-built medical center for women near Kabul. Theo confirmed what Caesar once said: ‘The Belgians are the bravest of all the Gauls.’
“I’ll be right here,” Theo said to Maccabee in flawless English. “If you need anything, just let me know.” He rubbed an L-shaped white scar on his cheek.
“Thanks, Theo.”
Maccabee walked toward her door, Donovan following. She stopped a little too abruptly and he couldn’t help but bump into her.
“Whoops!” he said.
“No, my whoops! I just wanted to say thanks again for letting me help.”
“We thank you, Maccabee.”
They smiled at each other and in that brief moment, Donovan felt something shift in him. A nice shift. He wasn’t sure what it was, but something emotional and big, some kind of tectonic plate had shifted in his psyche. He was sure of one thing: he was no longer looking at her as just the daughter of his good friend.
“So, will we see you at our breakfast meeting?”
“You will.”
Again, he felt the shift… a shift that he realized she might be reading in his eyes. What the hell is going on here?
“See you then,” he said, leaving quickly.
* * *
At the other end of the hallway, Benoit Broutifache pretended to search for a room key as Donovan Rourke headed toward the elevator and Maccabee Singh entered her room.
The big guard sat near her door and read his newspaper. Probably some rent-a-cop boozer picking up extra cash.
Broutifache walked the other way, then stepped into a hotel service room. He stepped behind a tall rack of towels and sheets and quickly took his gun’s firing pin from his key chain and fitted the pin back into his plastic Glock.
Then he waited.
Several minutes later, a room service waiter pushed a cart with silver covered food trays into the room, took some clean linen napkins from a rack and placed them on the cart. The food smell good.
“What’s for dinner?” Broutifache asked.
The startled waiter spun around and stared into the barrel of the Glock.