“What a character,” Troy Savage said, wearing a brown hat and sunglasses, an unlit Cohiba wedged in between his index and middle fingers while he sat next to Karen Frost in the rear of the bulletproof Mercedes-Benz limousine that had driven them from Berlin to Paris in a record thirteen hours. “The bodies of those poor bastards in the Reichstag aren’t even cold and he’s already talking about the future—his future at the helm of Germany.”
Karen shifted her gaze away from the Parisian streets and stared at the small rectangular plasma screen that had dropped from the ceiling and displayed the live satellite feed from Berlin. Savage had tuned it to CNN Europe so Karen could understand the broadcast.
“The amazing thing,” she said, holding a bottle of apple juice she had taken from the minibar, “is that no one is seeing this for what it is.” She took a sip. It was cold and refreshing. It felt good after sleeping in her seat for six hours while Savage did his thing on the wireless computer built into the rear of this handy armored transport, which had allowed her to travel freely even though her face had been broadcast in every news update and newspaper on this continent.
Rolf Hartmann definitely had pull in this region of the world. But Karen Frost was no schoolgirl. Even though she traveled protected by the tinted windows that allowed her to see the world without the world staring back at her, the seasoned FBI agent had also transformed her appearance back to a blonde, like she was in California, but with a European touch by applying mousse and brushing her hair straight back, exposing her forehead. That, plus the light-blue contact lenses that Savage had provided for her, gave the special agent a radically different look that bordered on the Nordic—and which went great with her dark jeans, blouse, and jacket.
Savage, casually dressed in denim jeans, a long-sleeve white shirt, and a sports coat and boots, clipped the end of his cigar before cracking the window next to him and lighting up. He took a couple of puffs, exhaling toward the window. “Why would this be any different than in 1933, when the Nazis set fire to the Reichstag and then blamed the opposition, the Communists, for it, helping Hitler consolidate his power over Germany? Everyone around the world saw it for what it was except for the people of Germany.”
“And Rolf Hartmann is doing it now,” said Karen, her eyes on the screen, the cigar smell tickling her nostrils. She didn’t much care for it but couldn’t bring herself to complain. After all, the man had saved her life—and Tom Grant’s for that matter, at least according to the report Savage received from a pair of twin operatives who had spotted her old boyfriend.
“I mean, look at him,” she added. “He’s trying to make himself appear like Giuliani in 2001, only the old New York City mayor actually gave a damn about what had happened, while this clown is the one who pulled the fucking trigger and now plans to benefit from it.”
Savage grunted, looking at the front of the limo, where his driver, one of his trained operatives, steered the vehicle through the narrow streets of Paris while making his way toward a quiet little neighborhood just north of the Louvre. “Germany loves the old bastard, even if he actually bought their love through free housing, education, and medical care. Hartmann is exactly where he has been wanting to be. Now he’s going to do the old Fidel trick and immortalize those he has killed and use that as a springboard for his own political agenda.”
“How are we going to keep him from getting away with it?”
Savage gave her a sideways glance before smiling, his goatee broadening. “He’s already gotten away with it, and within a few weeks—perhaps even sooner—Mr. Hartmann will be the undisputed leader of Germany. He will proclaim that he is filling in temporarily, until elections can be called and a new parliament and chancellor are elected.”
Karen took a sip of apple juice, realizing where Savage was going with this. “That’s nothing more than a delay tactic,” she said, more to herself, cigar smoke swirling around her.
Savage nodded. “You’re right, unfortunately. That’s his way of keeping everyone believing he intends to go through with the elections while he takes control of the military, while he digs himself in like the damned parasite that he is.”
“The reality,” Karen said, finishing Savage’s thought, “is that there will never again be elections in Germany while he is in control.”
“I wouldn’t even be surprised if somehow he manages to get dictatorial powers under some sort of emergency act until Germany’s government can be restored. And he will make the whole thing sound as if he’s just sacrificing himself, doing Germany one big favor by stepping in and providing leadership until new leaders can be elected.”
“Slick,” said Karen, her gaze shifting from the television screen to the streets of Paris rushing by. They were headed to a safe house somewhere in the vicinity of the Louvre, where two of Savage’s operatives waited for their arrival.
“We’re going to meet with the two guys who spotted Grant, right?”
He nodded. “Eduardo and Alfonso Ruiz. Twin brothers. I recruited them in Peru. They worked with Grant in the past and were able to make a positive ID. Unfortunately they lost Grant and his CIA boss while fighting off their pursuers.”
Karen didn’t remember anything about a CIA superior with Tom Grant. “What CIA boss? I thought Tom was operating alone.”
Savage shrugged. “I never said that. He is working with the spook who recruited him back from his retirement in El Salvador: CIA Officer Rachel Muratani.”
For reasons she could not explain, Karen’s heart skipped a beat. “A female officer?”
“And a young and cute one too.” He winked.
“That’s not funny,” Karen said.
“My apologies.”
“How long have you known he was operating with a female CIA officer?”
“Since he was recruited.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“I didn’t think it was relevant.”
“Why?”
“Look, I have CIA blood flowing in my veins. I’m trained to withhold information unless it is absolutely necessary that you know.”
“What else haven’t you told me, Troy? I thought we were on the level.”
Savage sighed, took a drag of his cigar, exhaled toward the crack in the side window, and said, “We are on the level. Muratani was the officer that Leyman and Morotski assigned to look into my disappearance at Langley. She tried to find the whereabouts of my best operatives, the ones I pulled from the Agency by staging their deaths. That led her to Tom.”
Karen crossed her arms. “And?”
“And she pulled him out of retirement to pick his brains in an attempt to find me.”
“Is she in with Leyman and Morotski?”
Savage shook his head. “I’m not sure. My guess is no, since she was with Savage inside the building during the explosion and then my operatives saw both of them running away together. By now they have been labeled beyond salvage and are on the run. I’m hoping they’re still in Paris, since it’s likely they weren’t carrying any ID with them—standard procedure—making it difficult to travel.”
“Difficult but not impossible.”
“Of course not. Look at you. Your face is already famous in Germany, but you managed to make it to Paris. We can’t discount the fact that Tom and his pretty associate might be doing something similar. After all, I trained him. By now they’ve probably changed their looks and are likely moving about pretending to be husband and wife while trying to find answers. My guess is that they look like one of thousands of newlywed couples on their honeymoon in the City of Love.”
Despite her better judgment, a wave of jealousy flashed across her face, and she hated herself for it. Karen had broken it off when Tom Grant had insisted on heading down to El Salvador for an early retirement. She had hated him not just for giving up instead of fighting the system but also for trying to uproot her life—her FBI career—by begging her to marry him and head south of the border. Although Karen had developed strong feelings for him, she had not been ready to quit yet, had not been ready to give up the lifelong commitment she had made many years before while standing over the grave of her husband, Mark, killed at the hands of a criminal network not unlike CyberWerke.
But Tom Grant had been manipulated back then, forced out of the business by Savage in order to protect his life from the likes of Nathan Leyman.
Tom.
Damn.
“That’s part of the reason why I didn’t mention Muratani,” said Savage, pointing at her face. “You still have feelings for the man.”
“Go to hell, Troy,” she said, crossing her arms and looking away.
“I’ll get there soon enough,” he replied. “But not yet. First I need to set things right in Langley.”
“Langley? Fuck Langley, Troy. We have to set things right in Germany—in CyberWerke. We have to bring down Rolf Hartmann and this shadowy network.”
“Now you’re talking,” he said, checking his watch before peering through the tinted glass.
The limousine continued down the Champs-Elysées for another minute, before turning left on Rue de Berri and right on Rue de Ponthieu, a tree-lined street of two- and three-story brownstones that ran parallel to the famous Parisian boulevard.
They pulled up roughly halfway up the block, in front of an ornate, wrought-iron fence. A well-kept garden spanned between the fence and the front porch of a three-story house with large tinted windows overlooking the street. Savage claimed to have spent a portion of his leave from Langley in this place coordinating his forces. Despite its charming appearance, the place was supposed to be built like a fortress.
Leaving the engine running, the driver got out, shut the door behind him, and had started to walk around the front to open the curb-side door for them when his face vanished behind a cloud of blood. In the same instant, several men materialized on the street holding machine guns; two more surged from behind bushes in the garden beyond the fence.
Bullets rained on the vehicle, the reports accentuated by the slugs pounding the doors and windows like hammers from hell.
Well aware that even the finest armored glass had its limits, Karen charged forward, diving through the space between the ceiling and the top of the front seat, landing on her side, the parking-brake handle stabbing her left kidney.
Ignoring her throbbing torso, the bullets peppering the roof, the sides, the sidewalk around them, Karen Frost slid out of the way, sitting behind the wheel as Troy began to crawl over the seats, but being twice her size, he lacked her nimbleness.
The attack intensifying, pummeling the vehicle like an apocalyptic hailstorm, Karen released the parking-brake handle while stepping on the gas.
The self-inflating tires screeched, burned while the Mercedes sedan leaped forward, shoving Savage back in the rear seat. As he cursed, Karen spotted three figures emerging from the safe house hauling bulky equipment.
Risking a sideways glance while keeping the gas pedal floored, she spotted all three of them raising green launching tubes over their shoulders.
RPGs!
In an instant she remembered how Anastasio Somoza, the deposed Nicaraguan dictator living in exile in Venezuela decades before, died when his armored vehicle got hit by a rocket-propelled grenade, spreading pieces of the old bastard all over Caracas.
“Hang on!” she screamed, the staccato gunfire ringing in her ears as she twisted the wheel violently to the left and then the right, forcing the car into a wicked zigzag while keeping her foot jammed hard against the gas pedal, while the rear windshield trembled under the infernal punishment.
She looked over her left shoulder again, watched the men swing their weapons in her direction.
The next intersection rushed up toward her, but she didn’t think she would make it before those warheads—
A streak of light shot past her side mirror, walloping into a vehicle parked thirty feet ahead.
A blinding explosion nearly made her lose control of the car, the acoustic energy rattling her teeth. But she hung in there, gripping the wheel, keeping the Mercedes under control as she cut left hard, away from the blast, from the flying debris, fire, and smoke.
Just then a second RPG dashed by on her immediate right, where she had been an instant ago. A second explosion on the same side of the street triggered a sheet of fire, smoke, and debris.
Rather than steering away from the inferno, Karen swung the vehicle back into the broiling mess the RPG warheads had made of the parked vehicles.
The billowing flames swallowed them, making it nearly impossible to see past a few feet, but that also meant that the terrorists couldn’t see them as well.
“Good instincts!” shouted Savage, finally making it over to the front as she kept the sedan moving forward, crushing the scorching debris littering the street, hitting something hard, the corner of a burning vehicle.
Metal screeched, twisted. The front quarter panel of the Mercedes flared up, tore loose, banging the windshield before flying overhead.
The Mercedes’ momentum shoved the burning wreck out of the way, sending it spinning over the sidewalk as they cleared the haze, as they left behind a thick curtain of pulsating fire and smoke separating them from the threat.
But the impact had not only torn off the Mercedes’ front quarter panel; it had also destroyed the tire.
Chunks of rubber and sparks flew past the windshield as the tire disintegrated and the bare rim spun over the cobblestones, hampering their momentum.
“Let’s get out of here!” Savage shouted, opening his door. Karen did the same, jumping out as the vehicle continued to move forward at around fifteen miles per hour.
She landed on her side and maintained a roll to spread out the impact across her body, before surging to a deep crouch just as she had been taught, watching the sedan crash into another vehicle.
The radiator hissing, spewing steam, Karen raced next to Savage toward the street corner, where pedestrians now gathered, looking down at the inferno behind her.
“What in the hell just happened?” she asked while Savage put away his gun before they reached the intersection of Rue de Ponthieu and Galerie des Champs, blending into the growing crowd.
“The safe house,” he said in between short breaths. “It’s been compromised.”
“No shit,” she replied.
Sirens blared in the distance. She spotted two white and green police cars—Renaults—racing up the Champs-Elysées. Behind them, the smoke and fire hid the far side of the block, where the terrorists had been.
“Come,” he said. “We still have time.”
“Time for what?”
But Savage was already sprinting up the wide boulevard, parallel to Rue de Ponthieu, where the attack had taken place, reaching the next corner, Rue de Berri, and turning right.
“Why are we headed back?” she asked, catching up, confused, her side throbbing from the roll.
“Do the unexpected,” Savage said, checking his watch, a red lump forming on his forehead, probably from banging around inside the Mercedes.
“We’re going to catch them?”
“Just one,” he replied, giving her a half grin before looking around them, thrusting a hand in his coat.
Karen did the same, curling her fingers around the handle of her Desert Eagle .44 Magnum semiautomatic, flipping off the safety, getting it ready to fire.
The street was pretty much empty now, the tourists and shop owners taking refuge somewhere, either inside shops or away from this area.
Smoke blew across the intersection of Rue de Berri and Rue de Ponthieu just before they reached it, just before they heard the sound of car engines revving up.
Two vehicles reached the intersection an instant later coming from the direction of the compromised safe house.
Karen and Savage retrieved their weapons about a dozen feet from the corner.
The vehicles turned at the corner, heading up Rue de Berri toward the Champs-Elysées, in their direction.
Karen and Savage open fire in unison, peppering the terrorists’ getaway vehicles, a pair of Renaults, one blue and the other burgundy.
The multiple reports banging her eardrums, the Desert Eagle reverberating in her hands as she pressed the trigger again and again, Karen briefly locked eyes with the surprised face of one of the drivers, who had been among the terrorists who had emerged from the garden. Savage had been correct. They had not expected Karen and Savage to return and position themselves here so quickly and were caught unprepared.
Although Savage placed his rounds efficiently across the side of the engine, tires, and driver’s side window of the trailing vehicle, it was Karen, with her massive Desert Eagle Magnum rounds, which possessed a kinetic energy large enough to go through an engine block, that forced the trailing Renault into a spin, sending it crashing by a row of parked vehicles hugging the left side of the street. The other Renault emerged through the fusillade, but the driver didn’t turn around to try and rescue their comrades but reached the Champs-Elysées, turning the corner, disappearing from view.
Sirens grew louder.
Emergency vehicles.
Help.
But not for Karen and Savage.
People gazed out of balcony windows, some screaming, others crying. A large group pointed in their direction from the wide boulevard a block away.
Karen ignored them as she rushed to the left side of the Renault while Savage covered the right side.
The driver was crumpled over the steering wheel, his face a bloody mess. The man in the front passenger seat stirred, coming around. The three sitting in the back were not moving.
“This one’s coming with us,” said Savage, trying to open the door, which was locked. Turning sideways, he drew up his left leg and stretched it toward the window, driving his boot through, bathing the dazed terrorist with glass.
Reaching through the hole, Savage unlocked the door, yanked it open, and dragged out the groggy terrorist, a medium-height, athletically built man in his twenties, with curly ash-blond hair, a wispy mustache, and sharp features.
The young stranger, a pair of bruises on his left cheek, had started to come around when Savage struck him just below the base of the neck, knocking him out.
Shouldering him with ease, Savage turned to Karen and said, “Let’s get out of here.”
They ran down Rue de Berri, away from the crowds and sirens, using the smoke drifting across the intersection to veil their escape.
Karen stopped by an old Fiat parked halfway down the next block.
“Wait,” she said, tugging at the door handle, which was locked. Using the massive steel-alloy muzzle of her Desert Eagle, she shattered the driver’s side window, reaching through and unlocking the door.
“Get in,” she said to a delighted Savage while reaching under the dash, which in this vehicle was open, not enclosed like in newer models. Her eyes searched for two red wires, the standard color for ignition wires. She found them easily, just as she had been trained at Quantico, yanking them loose before pulling them under the steering wheel, where she peeled back the plastic and crossed them.
The Fiat’s engine rumbled to life before Savage had gotten a chance to go around and drop the unconscious terrorist in the rear seat.
“Not bad, Agent Frost. Not bad at—”
“Where are we going?” she asked, working the shift and the pedals, putting the car in first gear, adding gas, releasing the clutch just as the oversized CIA operative landed in the front seat after tossing the terrorist in the back.
The car sprang forward, accelerating down Rue de Berri.
“I know just the place,” replied Savage, catching his breath, wiping the sweat filming his forehead. “I know just the place.”