He anticipated sitting in a secluded cabin in the Swiss Alps within two or three days with a bottle of schnapps, his operation complete and his ties to Syria behind him, and he found it humorous that the dangerous assassin Malik would be left to answer for everything that went wrong on this entire operation.
Drexler climbed out of his Mercedes and saw Malik standing apart from his men and the five sedans, ready for a quick private meeting with the Swiss intelligence agent. As Drexler began walking over to the Syrian operative, it occurred to him that perhaps he should be worried that he and Malik were operating at cross purposes. He knew all about Malik’s background. A former special forces soldier, he’d been recruited into the military intelligence service, then trained in assassination and demolitions in Iran by Iranian Quds Force commandos. After this he was sent to live in Europe under non-official cover, but he was handled by a senior Mukhabarat officer at the Syrian embassy in Paris. He and the thirteen men he commanded—all former military intelligence paramilitary officers trained in spycraft—were used by the Syrian regime, either here in France or anywhere in Europe where there was a need for dangerous covert operations.
Drexler himself had employed Malik’s talents to assassinate men and women in Paris, Berlin, and Brussels over the past two years.
This op in Paris put Drexler in a precarious position, to be sure. He’d love to terminate Bianca Medina the second he saw her, but he imagined it would be difficult if not impossible to kill her during the raid; he couldn’t let Malik or one of his men catch him in the act.
But even though bringing along the raid team of Syrian commandos hadn’t been Drexler’s idea—Ahmed Azzam himself had ordered the deployment of the European-based Syrian paramilitary assets—he assumed it would have been impossible to get to the woman at all without the added guns.
Drexler walked up to the Syrian commando team leader, the man who knew him only by his code name Eric. They did not shake hands. Instead, Malik held out a Beretta PT92 pistol encased in a leather holster. The Swiss operative took it, checked to make certain it was loaded and there was a round in the chamber, then tucked it into his waistband. He extended his hand again, and Malik gave him a silver snub-nosed revolver in an ankle holster. Drexler checked to make certain this weapon was loaded as well, and strapped it on his ankle. He also took the three extra loaded magazines for the Beretta and slipped them in the back pocket of his dark jeans.
Malik also gave Drexler a soft-armor Kevlar vest, capable of stopping handgun and submachine-gun rounds. The Swiss man had requested all these items from the Syrian, and Malik had come through.
As Drexler took off his jacket and donned his body armor, he saw the front passenger side of the white sedan open and a man unfold from the seat. He recognized Henri Sauvage instantly, because although they had never met in person, Drexler had been at first cultivating and then employing the police captain for two full years now, and the man’s image, as well as his CV, were well known to him.
As Sauvage began walking towards them through the warehouse, with one of Malik’s operatives close behind him, Drexler whispered to Malik, lest his voice echo, “He’s been disarmed, I assume.”
“Of course. And I’ve had a man with him constantly since this morning. He’s told no one about tonight.”
Malik had briefed Drexler by phone earlier about Sauvage’s actions over the past few days. The man clearly wasn’t in this for the money anymore. He was in this because of the fourteen men with guns standing around. It was a suboptimal influence mechanism for an intelligence officer to use over an agent, but Drexler hoped he wouldn’t need the man’s compliance for much longer. He figured he only needed to keep Sauvage around until they had the woman in pocket, and then he would be just as expendable as his three dead confederates.
Sauvage stopped in front of Drexler and Malik, but his focus was on the new man at the warehouse. “You’re Eric, I take it.”
Drexler extended a hand. “At your service.”
Drexler could see the rage on the Frenchman’s face, so he withdrew the hand.
Sauvage said, “To hell with you. To hell with every last one of you. You killed my partner. I’m not doing anything else for your fucked-up cause.”
Drexler noted that Henri Sauvage had grown a spine since Malik had told him he was surly but utterly docile. “This is a difficult time and I understand your anger. Let’s just get through this evening and, as long as we achieve our objective, your obligation to us will be fulfilled.”
Sauvage lit a cigarette now. “You don’t hear so well, do you?”
Drexler sighed. “I hear the words. But I see into your soul. You want to live through this. Listen, mon amie. Your only job tonight is to stay behind the action, in case we don’t get the woman. Tonight you will be safe, and sequestered from both danger and compromise. But I will require your presence.”
Sauvage stared the man down for a long moment, then looked away with resignation. “Do I have a choice?”
“Everyone has a choice, but I think you would prefer doing what we ask rather than choosing what’s behind the other door.”
The Frenchman blew smoke into the night. “Tell me what’s going to happen.”
“Of course,” Drexler said. “We will raid that property, but you will remain on the perimeter. In the event Mademoiselle Medina is not on the premises, we’ll have to start back at square one, and we will need a high-ranking police officer here in the city for that. But if she’s there, and if we get her, tomorrow you can wake up wealthy and safe, knowing you’re finished working for me.”
Sauvage shrugged. Drexler had obviously appeased him somewhat by his words. He said, “She’s there. Along with at least five or six men.”
Drexler smiled and looked at Malik. “Then my colleague and his associates should have no problems. Malik . . . consider this your show now.”
The curly-haired Syrian waved to the five vehicles running their engines nearby. “We will board the cars and move to the predeployment locations. A member of the communications team will be dropped off on the north side of the FSEU safe house to disable the landline, and the other communications men will go to the west side, along with you, Monsieur Sauvage, for jamming operations. The assault team will infiltrate the woods on the south and western sides of the property by means of a private farmland access road that runs through it.”
He looked at his watch. “It’s eleven p.m. We will leave now to be in position to raid the home at midnight. Let’s go.”
Drexler, Sauvage, and Malik, along with the commandos standing around, climbed into the sedans, and all sixteen men rolled out of the warehouse and into the rain moments later. Other than Henri Sauvage, they were all armed, and other than Sebastian Drexler, they all thought they were on their way to rescue a woman for the purpose of returning her to Syria.
CHAPTER 35
In the center of the upbeat and raucous second floor of Bar 80 in Old Town Damascus, Court Gentry sat at a table made up of silent and dour men with a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s and a half-empty bottle of Old Bushmills in the center of it. Court wasn’t drinking much himself; instead he focused his attention on a group of a half dozen young local men chatting up a gaggle of beautiful girls in their twenties at a table near the stairwell. The girls were only mildly amused by the attention, but the men seemed sure they were striking gold with their conversational skills.
Court had been on the hunt for a cell phone that would suit his needs for the last twenty minutes, which was why he had homed in on this particular group. He saw phones in the purses, hands, or pockets of everyone there, or on the table itself, and he recognized that if one of the men or women let their guard down, the table was close enough to the door to the stairwell that he thought he could push by, palm a device into his hand, and then slip away undetected.
But for now, he saw no obvious easy marks, so he kept scanning.
* * *