McGarvey and Pete sat in the back of a Police Nationale Citroën parked on the Rue de Rivoli, watching images on a laptop computer. A nearly silent camera-equipped drone had been circling overhead ever since Alex had left the InterContinental and strolled into the Jardin as if she were a woman without a care in the world.
Bete, who was sitting in the front passenger seat, watched the images from the drone on another laptop. “She is an impressive woman, hein?”
“That she is,” McGarvey agreed.
“Shall we send someone to help her?”
“Not unless you want to save the kids from themselves. She knows I’ve followed her, and she’s staged this thing, figuring I would get involved.”
“To save the children.”
“Something like that. But she won’t kill them.”
All of it, the stealth helicopter that had followed her cab from de Gaulle, the use of Sûreté officers and the air force drone, had been put into play within minutes after the colonel had signed on. But only after McGarvey had explained what he thought was going on.
“Your government might not be so pleased if you uncover their little secret,” Bete had said on the Gulfstream.
“The reaction of my government is not my concern right now. I’m trying to solve a murder mystery. I know the likely why of it now, but not the who.”
“Not her?” Bete asked.
“No. She’s here to try to avoid being the next victim.”
Two more kids went down with dislocated kneecaps, and the last two boys stood in front of her, panting because of their exertions, and pissed off but obviously wary. Alex was a slightly built woman. An ancient in their minds. An obviously easy mark for a little fun—a rape for sure, and maybe even a few euros if she had any on her, or jewelry. Maybe a watch. But all of it for fun plus a little drug money.
The angle of the camera was wrong, so the expression on her face wasn’t clear on the monitors, but the way she held herself, nonchalant, just about hipshot, arms at her sides, waiting for the boys to come in at her, was of a woman without concern for her safety.
After what seemed like a very long time, she turned and walked away, not bothering to look over her shoulder.
The boys stood there for a while but then pocketed their knives and helped the others. Within a few minutes they were gone, in the opposite direction of Alex.
“Formidable,” Bete said.
“If you want to arrest her, you’ll have to give your people plenty of room,” McGarvey said.
“What now, Colonel?” asked the young Sûreté officer behind the wheel.
“We’re finished here. You may recall the drone, and give my thanks to Major Lucien.”
“Where may I drop you, sir?”
“That’s up to Monsieur McGarvey,” Bete said.
Alex was heading up toward the Champs-Élysées.
“Looks like she’s going for a walk,” McGarvey said. “Get back to the InterContinental and toss her room. I doubt if she’ll have left anything important behind, maybe a passport or two and some cash and credit cards.”
“How delicate shall I be?”
“Use a soft touch, but let her know someone was snooping around.”
“What about me?” Pete asked.
“Check us in, and try for the same floor,” McGarvey said. “I won’t be long.”
“She’s looking for trouble,” Pete warned.
“She knows I’m here, and she’s sent me a message.”
“Which is?” Bete asked.
“That she can handle herself, but that unless she’s seriously provoked, she won’t kill anyone. She’s here to meet someone, or at least get word to him.”
“George,” Pete said, but not as a question.
McGarvey took a last glance at the monitor, then got out of the car and started walking fast back toward the Pont de la Concorde, figuring that if Alex were intending for the Champs-Élysées, he would be in time to tuck in behind her.
* * *
The Place de la Concorde, with its slender obelisk, was at the foot of the Champs-Élysées, and it was alive with traffic, including pedestrians on their way to sidewalk cafés on the avenue or even the McDonald’s for their morning coffees and croissants.
McGarvey crossed the Rue Boissy d’Anglas, dodging traffic and heading along the upper side of the avenue, paying attention to who was coming up behind him or shadowing him from the other side. Alex was the only one left from Alpha Seven, and since she hadn’t killed Schermerhorn, nor almost certainly the others, it meant she was the last target.
But whoever the killer was had a very good source of intelligence inside the CIA. Not only good enough to pinpoint Wager, Fabry, Knight, and Schermerhorn, and Alex, but to get on and off campus without raising any alarms.
He and Otto had suspected it might be someone working for Blankenship—or possibly even the director of security himself. But Blankenship had been in his office when Schermerhorn was murdered, and had been driving through the main gate when Knight had been attacked. Nor had he been absent from his desk when Coffin had been shot and killed on the boat in Piraeus.
Alex’s alibis weren’t as tight—she was on a long weekend when Coffin was shot, and as an NOC in Iraq she had been an excellent marksman with the Barrett sniper rifle—and she was definitely off campus when Schermerhorn had been murdered.
But if she thought the killer was George, and that he was somewhere here in Paris, and if he was indeed the killer, she was playing with fire, because it was possible he knew she had come to Paris.
Two-thirds of the way to the Arc de Triomphe, he spotted her sitting at a sidewalk table at the Café George V. The waiter had just set two coffees down and was walking away.
She was obviously expecting someone. McGarvey waited for a couple of minutes, watching her, waiting for whoever it was to show up, but when no one came, he walked over.
“Your coffee is getting cold,” she said, looking up.
“I thought you might be waiting for George,” McGarvey said, sitting across from her.
She smiled. “He’s the last person I wanted to see. Tell me about Roy. Do you think he’ll survive the night?”
“That why you ran?”
She looked at something across the broad avenue. “That’s obvious, isn’t it?”
“Then why the little display in the Tuileries?”
“Just kids out to have a little fun.”
“They’ll think twice before they attack another woman.”
She smiled again. “That’s the whole point, Mr. McGarvey. I can take care of myself, and I mean to do so.”
“I found you.”
“I let you find me. But unless you or Pete or Otto have told anyone about my movements, I figure I’ll be reasonably safe here for a few days or so.”
“Then where?”
“That’ll be up to you, won’t it?” she said. “If you find George, I’m home free. Relatively speaking.”
“Otto’s decrypted the fourth panel.”
“What’d it say?”
“‘Let there be light.’”
Alex laughed, the sound low from the back of her throat. “Sounds like Roy. Anything else?”
“And there was peace.”
She nodded wistfully. “Then you know what’s still buried over there.”
“Schermerhorn’s dead.”
For a long moment Alex didn’t react, but then her face fell by degrees, and she looked down. “I thought by leaving it would draw him away. I thought he’d come after me, just like I knew you would. And if my luck held, the two of you would come face-to-face.”
She’d laid a copy of The International New York Times on the table, and a chance breeze ruffled it. She suddenly moved to the left to reach for it, when a rifle shot struck a nearby male patron in the chest, and he was slammed violently backward. He had been seated at the table just behind them.
McGarvey rolled to the right and dropped to the sidewalk, searching the roof line across the broad boulevard in time to see a figure in a second-floor window disappear.
A woman passing by screamed, and people in the café began to react, some of them scrambling out of their seats, trying to escape what to them had to look like the start of another terrorist attack.
When he looked over his shoulder, Alex was gone.