“Happen? He didn’t happen! He was born! His name is Jamal, and he turned four months old last week.”

Rima cleared her throat. “Jamal.” She looked at Tarek, then back to Bianca. “And . . . and the father?”

Bianca shouted through angry sobs. “Who do you think? Ahmed Azzam is the father!” Then she stood. “I’ve got to get out of here.”

The guard by the window moved forward with a hand out, motioning for Medina to sit back down. Tarek stood, as well, and stepped around the table towards her. She made no move towards the door, but she did not sit down, either.

“Am I your hostage?” she croaked. “Am I a prisoner here, just like I was in Damascus?”

Rima stood, stepping around the table, but she moved behind Bianca. She led the woman gently back into her seat. “No, daughter. Of course not. We only want what’s best for everyone. You will see. We are friends.”

It took Tarek several seconds to recover from the bombshell news about the love child of the Syrian president. And when he did recover, his words were considerably less calming than those of his wife. “You are our guest, and you will remain so until you speak publicly about your trip to Tehran with Ahmed Azzam.”

Medina shook her head. “I won’t do anything for you as long as my child is in Damascus. Torture me if you want, but you will get nothing!”

Tarek asked, “How on earth are we supposed to get your child out of Syria?”

“I don’t have any idea, but I didn’t put you in this situation. You did. I am only thinking of Jamal. You either let me leave right now, or you kill me right now, because you’re insane if you think I’m going to abandon my baby willingly.”

The man in the dark blue suit stood, eyed the Halabys, and left through the door to the hall. The Syrian couple followed without a word to Bianca Medina, leaving the bearded guard to watch over her.

CHAPTER 11

Sebastian Drexler sat on a bench in a darkened vestibule outside Shakira Azzam’s quarters in the presidential palace. He held his satellite phone to his ear and listened to it ring.

It would be difficult to explain himself if he was found by one of the palace guards right now: seated outside the first lady’s private quarters in the middle of the night while the first lady was alone inside. But Drexler’s confidence was born out of his intelligence, hard work, and meticulous study. He’d lived here at the palace for two years, and he had long since worked out all the security measures the guards employed. He knew the sentry rotations and patrol schedules, the individual proclivities of palace personnel, the camera angles of the CCTV system . . . even the direction of the motion sensor lighting in the gardens and pathways outside. The former Swiss intelligence officer could walk through virtually all the corridors in the main building and avoid being caught on security cameras or encountering sentries by now, and he’d made a game out of besting the palace guards.

Drexler had spoken boldly to Shakira about his “people” in Paris, and he had every right to do so. He’d hired four members of the Paris Police Prefecture, well-placed law enforcement personnel working there in the capital, to feed him intelligence and monitor the movements of Bianca Medina for the three days she was in France, and so far they had done a fine job. But the truth was that Drexler had not told the captain in charge of his small cell of dirty police the full extent of his interest in Medina, and now that there had been a terrorist attack in Paris involving the woman, he did not know if the man would balk if ordered to hunt Bianca Medina down and kill her.

ISIS was supposed to handle that end of the operation, and ISIS had made a mess of it.

Henri Sauvage was the leader of Drexler’s cell in Paris. In the past two years Henri and his crew had tracked down and surveilled Syrian dissidents, agitators, and expatriates in Paris via the French police database, over French police CCTV networks, or by using actual shoe leather.

The four French cops had proved themselves reliable and discreet, which was good, and they’d proved themselves insatiably greedy, which, as far as Drexler was concerned, was excellent.

The phone rang so many times that Drexler worried Sauvage had stopped taking his calls after the dramatic gun battle, so he was relieved to finally hear a click and an “’Allo?”

Drexler spoke in French, and he adopted the code name he used when working with his Paris cell. “Sauvage? It’s Eric. What have you learned?”

The man shouted into the phone. “What the fuck happened tonight, Eric?”

“Calm down, man,” Drexler said. “I told you there might be an event at seven Rue Tronchet. I wanted you to be ready to check it out immediately if something happened.”

“It was ISIS! It was a major fucking ISIS operation! Are you with ISIS? Mon dieu, am I with ISIS?”

“Get a hold of yourself. Don’t be so dramatic. Of course I’m not with ISIS, and neither are you. You and I have worked together for some time, you know that. I’m just someone who hears things, and I heard something. I didn’t know if it was true or not. Just relax, and tell me what you know.”

“I’m outside the hotel now, but I went in as soon as I got here. Man, it was a fucking bloodbath in that suite. Bodies everywhere. Blood. Scorched walls, bullet holes, broken glass. It looked like a damned—”

“But the girl? I heard she is missing.”

Sauvage said nothing at first, then replied softly. “I’m out, man. We all are. We didn’t sign up for any of—”

Drexler butted in. “No, Henri, you aren’t out. You and your boys are in, and you’re in thick. Give me what I want, or this goes bad for you very quickly.”

“Are you threatening me?”

“Only because you are making me do so. We can resolve all this quickly, you can earn more money than your sad government job will pay you in years, and then we can all move on.”

When Sauvage hesitated, Drexler said, “Or I go to your employers and reveal the other operations you’ve been a part of over the past two years.”

Sauvage hesitated a little more, but he finally did give Drexler the information he wanted. “The girl is gone. Nobody knows where she is.”

“Who took her?”

“One man. All alone.”

Drexler looked down at the satellite phone in his hand, a look of shock on his face. “One of her bodyguards?”

“Non. They are all dead at the scene. Whoever took her was someone not associated with her trip, or with the hotel. Everyone else—dead or alive—is accounted for.”

“What about CCTV?”

“The kidnapper was a pro. He avoided the hotel cameras; we figure he must have come in from the roof. We checked neighborhood traffic cameras, and that’s how we know we are dealing with a single man. We see the girl being walked along at a fast pace by a lone individual. This guy didn’t look like an ISIS terrorist. White, about one meter eighty in height, with a beard and dark clothing. They were heading north on foot, but we haven’t determined where they went yet.”

Drexler thought a moment. “Whoever did this has been following her during her trip to Paris.”

“We didn’t see anyone, but we are considering this possibility and are looking into it. We’ve reviewed recordings of cameras here at seven Rue Tronchet and nothing has turned up, but I have Foss and Allard checking with restaurants, clothing stores, and other venues she visited while in town. We’re tapping into CCTV networks now, and I’m hoping we’ll get something in the next hour.”

Drexler said, “Check for traffic tickets around venues she’s visited.”

Sauvage replied coolly. “I don’t know who you really are, Eric, but you know I’m a cop. No need to tell me my job.”

The Swiss asset working for the Syrian first lady replied, “You know enough about who I am. I’m the man paying your wage. Do as I fucking say.”

A pause, then, “Oui, monsieur.”

“The ISIS man who was captured. Is he talking?”

“No. He’s got grenade fragments in him; he probably won’t survive the night.”

Drexler hoped he didn’t. He was no use to the operation any longer, and he had failed in his task.

The French captain added, “Like I said, we’ll try to have something within the hour.”

“Call me back in fifteen. Find me intel about the man who took her!”

“But—”

“Fifteen,” Drexler repeated, then hung up the phone.

CHAPTER 12

After Bianca Medina revealed the existence of her son, Tarek and Rima Halaby left the bedroom where the interrogation was taking place, following Vincent Voland back up the hall to the living room of the warehouse apartment. They did not speak during the walk up the hall, not until they had shut the door to the living room and locked it, and not until Rima sat at the kitchen table and placed her head in her hands, rubbing her eyes as she spoke.

“How did we not know about the child?”

Tarek was angry, defensive. He paced the room. “No one knew. In fact, she could be lying because she doesn’t want to help us. Just a ruse to get her back to Syria.”

Rima looked up at her husband. “You saw her, same as me. Was that woman lying to us?”