Le Quinze was bustling on the lunch rush, and Baland found the ever-solicitous Henri presiding behind his maître d’s podium.
“Good afternoon, Monsieur Baland. Your table is waiting and your guest has already arrived.”
“Thank you.”
Baland followed Henri through a maze of partitions that was clearly designed to enhance privacy—the reason, along with the food, that the restaurant had risen in popularity with actors, statesmen, and, perhaps most tellingly, a recent influx of wealthy Russian mobsters.
Turning the final corner, Baland was surprised to see someone other than Michelis at his usual white-linened corner table. “I’m sorry,” he said, leaning toward Henri, “but I was expecting Director Michelis.”
Henri half turned and gave Baland the same look he might have if he’d just been told Bastille Day had been canceled. “But monsieur, I was told very distinctly that—”
“It’s all right,” interrupted the man at the table in English. “Monsieur Baland doesn’t recognize me, but we are in fact old acquaintances.”
Baland locked eyes with the man, whose hands were out of sight under the table, and saw a slight nod toward the opposing chair. “Yes,” he said hesitantly, keeping with English, “it’s all right, Henri.”
A relieved Henri disappeared, and Baland settled cautiously into the chair and took stock of the man across from him. He appeared rather tall, and wore a casual jacket and collared shirt. He looked fit and tan, and a pair of unusual gray eyes were keenly active.
“Do you know who I am?” the man asked.
“I have no idea,” Baland lied. The photograph Malika had given him was still in his pocket.
“Really? Either way, I’ll have to ask you to keep your hands where I can see them.”
“Will you not extend me the same courtesy?”
Surprisingly, the assassin did, his hands appearing on the white tablecloth. His eyes drilled Baland, and he nodded as if some great internal question had been answered. “How did you do it?” the man finally asked.
“Do what?” replied Baland.
“Escape Gaza. Settle unnoticed in France.”
“I don’t know what you are talking about. If—”
“Please, Ali. Let’s not waste time.”
Baland played his next facial expression with the greatest of care. Gradual understanding, as if old points of fact were connecting. “All right. You have made a mistake, but I think an understandable one.”
“Which is?”
“I won’t explain without knowing who I am dealing with.”
“You’re dealing with someone who will gladly kill you for one wrong answer.”
* * *
Malika preferred rooftops for many reasons. Elevation was always an advantage, particularly in urban areas, where steep angles removed traffic and pedestrians from lines of fire. It also allowed a raptor’s view of the surrounding streets and buildings, giving maximum awareness of possible threats and escapes. Today, unfortunately, the rooftop was not her friend.
Her mistake had been arriving late, shortly after noon. She’d wasted too much time in her flat dealing with Baland’s partial dossier. She had tried taking photographs of the pages using a proper camera, but had trouble getting acceptable images without a flash. She’d reverted to her phone with mixed results. The test image she’d launched to Raqqa had come back unsent, and for twenty minutes Malika fussed with the phone’s settings and resolution controls before successfully transferring a page. Then she had looked at the clock.
She’d arrived at Le Quinze in a rush, but then spent twenty minutes maneuvering onto the roof without being seen. There she’d assembled her weapon of choice, a Remington CSR sniper rifle. Also contained in her three-foot-long cardboard box, the label of which suggested a lighting fixture, was an H&K UMP, a compact semiautomatic in case close work became necessary.
Once in place, Malika had immediately begun watching the entrance of Le Quinze. She would normally have taken time to study the surrounding area. Just as with the rubble warrens of Mosul and Ramadi, angles should have been figured and escape routes mapped. The weather was taking a noticeable turn for the worse—heavy skies held the promise of rain, and the midday light seemed more akin to dusk. The wind was picking up as well, and she wished she’d been able to make estimates of where gusts accelerated between buildings and where eddies seemed to fall.
There hadn’t been time for any of that.
Baland’s car had arrived right on schedule, at one o’clock, and in those critical moments Malika’s watchfulness had gone into overdrive. She’d held her breath as he crossed twenty feet of open ground to reach the restaurant’s door, her weapon searching, her finger poised. She was positioned classically as a countersniper—high above the presumed target and looking outward for an assassin. With Baland acting as bait, she had scanned every window across the street, stepped her eyes to each car parked along the curb. Malika waited for the Israeli to appear, confident that if he did, she would see something. A glint, a muzzle flash, even the telltale barrel.
It had now been five minutes since Baland passed through the door. Still nothing had happened. Had she been wrong about Slaton coming here? Might he be nearby, waiting for Baland to come back outside? She decided the answer to both questions was no. He was here, somewhere. But he had found another way.
Which meant the rooftop was a mistake. It was entirely the wrong place to be.
* * *
Baland did not flinch, but neither did the man across the table. The gunmetal-gray eyes seemed almost aqueous, enveloping the entire room at once. Baland too was taking in as much as he could. His back was not quite squared to the entrance, and in the periphery, over his right shoulder, he could see people coming and going.
He narrowed his gaze, and said, “I think you might be Israeli—is that it?”
No answer.
Baland produced a slight smile. “Since you called me Ali just now, I know who you think I am—Ali Samir. And so you are wondering how a terrorist hunted down by Israel, many years ago now, has been reborn as a senior officer at DGSI.” He shifted slightly in his seat to have a better view to his right, never taking his eyes off Slaton. “A searching mind might even imagine that you were the hunter on that fateful day.”
Finally a reaction, the eyes regarding him with something distant. Perhaps a remembrance of my face through a telescopic sight? he wondered.
“I’ll neither confirm nor deny that.”
Baland nodded. “Of course. Any other answer would have given me doubt. So I know who you are. Therefore, I will return the favor. I am not Ali Samir,” he said, adding a pause to give emphasis to his next words. “I am his identical twin brother.”