The Paris Protection (2 page)

Moving away from the platform, he clomped down the grated metal steps, with Kazim in tow. They must leave the warehouse soon. He had little time to deal with Julian.

2

REBECCA REID SWUNG THE PILLOW as hard as she could, catching the side of his head and knocking him off the bed. Twisting her body sideways, she pulled the ruffled beige sheet up to cover her naked body. The man, having recovered from the fall to the hardwood floor, scrambled back to the side of the bed, where he stayed on his knees as if to pray or ask for clemency.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Too late,” she replied. “I don’t care.”

“Forgive me.”

“Never,” Rebecca said. “You just made the biggest mistake of your life.”

David Stone smiled. It was a big, happy smile that lit up his eyes, temporarily relieving his habitually serious demeanor. Rebecca was the only one in the United States Secret Service who ever saw this side of him. It was one of the reasons she had let him break down her usually strong defenses and—against her better judgment—risk her reputation on his decency as a man. But she was smart enough never to reveal her vulnerability to him.

David walked his elbows a few inches forward on the bed, leaning closer. His dress clothes and hers were strewn in a crooked line from the door. His pale, muscular chest pressed against the rumpled sheets, his arms reaching out toward her.

She swung the pillow at him again. This time, he blocked it and sprang off the floor to pounce on the bed. But as he leaned in to kiss her neck, he made the mistake of keeping his weight forward. She threw an arm up under his right arm while twisting her hips and knocking his left arm out from under him, throwing him off balance as his momentum carried him across the bed and down to the floor on the other side.

She laughed as he tumbled back to the floor.

“This is ridiculous,” he groaned, sitting up. “We don’t have much time.”

“You’re
out
of time, buster. POTUS will be here soon, and you need to save your energy.”

“Oh, I have plenty.”

“No way,” she said, grinning as she slipped out of bed. “I’m going to take a really fast shower and dash downstairs.”

“Perfect! I’ll join you.”

“You’d better get back to your own room and clean up before she gets here.” She motioned with her eyes toward the nightstand. “And don’t forget your gun.”

“You really don’t want it?” he asked. “It was an expensive gift.”

Rebecca pointed at the small nickel-plated subcompact semiautomatic, still in the wooden box on the bed, near the nightstand. The box was surrounded by torn red wrapping paper. The box’s purple felt lining seemed to accentuate the fine craftsmanship of the pistol, which was only slightly larger than the palm of her hand.

“It’s a prostitute’s gun.”

“No, it’s not.”

“It’s a Model Fifty-two Special, right? That’s for prostitutes.”

“No.”

“Yes! Look, it even came with a harness that straps high on the leg and can attach to a garter belt.”

“No—I mean yes, but no. That’s not what I meant.”

“You’re supposed to get a woman chocolates or roses or diamonds, not a gun—and especially not a gun favored by ladies of the evening. That’s how you think of me? As your prostitute? Is that it?”

“No, of course not! I just thought . . . I like guns and saw it at a trade show in Philly last month, and my instincts told me to buy it for you. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s stupid, but I’ve been looking forward to the right moment to give it to you. I’ve never bought anything this expensive for anyone before. And honestly, if you reject it, it’ll feel like you’re rejecting my instincts towards
you
.”

She thought about what her father and three older brothers would think of this. “I’m sorry, but I just can’t accept it.”

“Becky . . .”

She shook her head. “Nope, sorry. I can’t.”

She walked naked across the wood floor, past the palatial white curtains and into the bathroom. Closing the door, she pulled the thick towel off the hook and slung it over the shower rod.

From the other side of the door came David’s muffled voice. “I’m sorry.”

She ignored him and stepped into the shower. Just before she turned it on, she heard “I love you,” accompanied by soft scratching on the door.

She picked up the hotel’s complimentary bathroom slippers and tossed them hard against the door. “You’d better hurry,” she said. “You don’t want to be late for the shift change.”

She heard a muttered “
Damn
.” She unhooked the Parisian-style hose nozzle from the shower to avoid getting her hair wet. The hotel room’s door thudded shut—David had left. 

Two minutes later, she jumped out, dried and dressed, brushed her hair, and put on her array of weapons and equipment: collapsible baton, loaded P229 with two extra magazines, belt with plastic hand ties, mace, and a flash-bang grenade for emergency crowd control. She attached her Thales P25 Digital Encryption radio to the back of her belt, ran the wire up inside her suit jacket and down the sleeve, and clipped the microphone to her wrist, and the earpiece up the back of her neck and over and into her ear.

She had so rushed when getting ready that it wasn’t until she moved around the bed that she saw the box still resting on the stand. She sighed. Why hadn’t he taken it, as she asked? Opening the box, she looked at the diminutive weapon, gleaming in the room’s sharp canned lighting. It did look nice. But she couldn’t accept it. The only daughter of a Colorado sheriff, and the baby sister of three Denver police detectives, she had spent her entire life fighting to prove that women could be just as strong in law enforcement as men. Being accepted into the Secret Service was still one of the proudest days of her life. And she just couldn’t play into the roles that women had historically been forced to tolerate. A small gun would have been bad enough, but the make and style used by prostitutes of the early twentieth century—that was unacceptable.

Then she thought of David’s final plea to accept the gift as nothing more than a good-faith gesture. It was sweet that he had thought of her and planned to give her this gift for over a month. She hadn’t even realized he was thinking of her for that long. And she did like him a lot—maybe more than just
liked
him. She certainly didn’t want to discourage him.

She would return it to his room. It was only a gift. It wouldn’t change anything if she returned it. She hoped it wouldn’t, but look how long it had taken to get him to open up to her.

What kind of fool felt an “instinct” to buy a girl a gun like this?

Perhaps
her
fool.

She stared at the gun, knowing she didn’t want to risk losing him over something so small. Maybe she could keep it. If she did, it would be wise to keep it a secret from her family and anyone else who asked.

She picked it up, held it in her hand, and thought of David. It was a sweet gesture, even if it had been a miscalculation on his part. Perhaps he just might be the thoughtful, silly fool she had been looking for all these years.

3

MAXIMILIAN AND KAZIM WALKED ALONG the concrete shipping platform, where the two hundred men were distributing cases of weapons. Maximilian grabbed a Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun from one of the men, checked that the safety was on, and released the magazine. Seeing the full double stack of nine-millimeter rounds, he pulled the bolt back and locked it, reinserted the magazine and felt the two clicks, and vigorously slapped the cocking handle out of the indent. Then he opened up the collapsible stock and flipped the safety selector to full automatic, raised the MP5 to his shoulder as if to fire, and lowered it, switching the selector back to the safe position.

“You need to grab anything?” Maximilian gestured at the case.

Kazim took one of the MP5s.

“How many men does he have?” Maximilian said.

“Five here with him, but he also has the cartels behind him.”

“An hour from now, that won’t matter.”

They kept walking until they reached the metal staircase leading to the basement below the abandoned factory. Approaching the large windowed foreman’s office on the underground level, Maximilian saw Julian with five burly bodyguards inside. When the men made eye contact with him, Kazim took a quick step forward and fired the submachine gun. The windows shattered as bullets punched through the glass and riddled the falling, sprawling bodyguards.

Julian fell back in his chair. Looking wide-eyed at Maximilian, his shocked expression hinted at a question he seemed desperate to ask if only he weren’t so terrified.

Maximilian stepped through the shattered glass doorway, his boots crunching the shards scattered along the concrete floor. Kazim followed and stood a few steps behind him.

“Why did you do that!” Julian yelled, as if he were in charge.

But Maximilian saw sweat building on the pudgy Frenchman’s pale skin. “Why have you come here tonight?” Maximilian asked. “You should be far away from this place by now.”

“It has been my responsibility to make sure you have everything you need. Have I not supplied you with everything you requested during these past two months? Have I ever failed you?”

“You failed yourself and your family by coming here tonight,” Maximilian replied.

“The cartel wanted to make sure that all evidence is destroyed after you leave. I’m here at their request.”

Maximilian shook his head and looked at Kazim. “You hear that? The cartel sent him.”

Kazim glared, his dark features frozen except for the habitual movement of his lips, as if he were chewing tobacco.

“You have more men here than we agreed on,” Julian said.

“I needed this many for things to succeed.”

“Succeed? What in God’s name are you talking about! You are to fail! That is the plan! You
know
this!”

Maximilian stepped to the side and windmilled a kick to Julian’s face. A crack sounded as the heavy boot broke the Frenchman’s jaw and sent him spinning to the floor.

Julian lay on his side, gurgling while holding his broken jaw and staring up with confused, fearful eyes.

Maximilian leaned in close. “We have new plans, which are supported by Dominik Kalmár.”

Julian mumbled something unintelligible.

Maximilian lectured the suffering man. “This goes beyond your cartel friends and their network of organized crime. This is a revolution. This is the beginning of a realignment of world power. And it starts with the death of the American president. We will not hide the evidence that we were here. While my men move through the tunnels, I will leave clues to make sure future investigators can follow the path we traveled. The president will be dead within the hour, and weeks from now, when the investigators are here, they will find the connections to the cartel and to governments in the Middle East. And then the fire, already ignited, will grow faster than any politician or military leader can control.”

Julian tried to slide away from Maximilian while still holding his broken jaw. Kazim pulled out one of his pistols and held it at his hip like a gunslinger, leveled at Julian’s head.

“Why does no one understand what needs to be done?” Maximilian added. “Why does no one see how quickly we can solve so many of the world’s problems?” He wiped away the few beads of sweat that had formed on his forehead. “Well, soon everyone will understand.”

Turning, he walked toward the door. “Good-bye, my friend. Thank you for all your help. Your assistance will help change the world.” 

Then, as he walked out the door, he nodded, and Kazim fired a single shot from across the room and silenced Julian’s mumbling forever.

Then Kazim followed Maximilian back up the metal stairs to the armed company that three years of planning had created. With their deep passion to right the world and level the field for future generations, they would now unleash hell.

When the two men arrived on the main floor of the factory, all the fighters were ready and waiting. Maximilian led them to the opposite end of the factory and down an old stone stairwell into the basement. There they proceeded to a narrow metal staircase, built in perhaps the 1930s, which descended yet deeper into the earth. It ended at a short landing in front of a steel door encrusted with small clumps of rust. Maximilian grabbed the round handle protruding like a steering wheel from the door and turned it counterclockwise a few rotations until he felt the latch release from the steel frame.

He pushed open the door and stared into the dark tunnel, which led into one of the many abandoned shelters that the Parisians had built in these ancient underground tunnel systems to protect themselves against German bombing raids. After Hitler decided to forgo bombing Paris in order to preserve the city for occupation, many French resistance fighters had used these same shelters and tunnels to hide from the Nazis.

Maximilian turned on his headlamp, which pierced the tunnel’s darkness for perhaps fifty feet. Beyond stretched the pitch-black void. Here, near old war shelters, the tunnels were as tall and wide as most hotel corridors, with perfect ninety-degree angles cut into the bedrock. He knew that most of the tunnels beneath Paris were not nearly this wide or modern. But these shelters still hadn’t been used since the war, though random spray-painted words and markings left indisputable signs of recent illegal exploring. His headlamp picked up a white stripe painted on the left wall, with orange and black line arrows pointing ominously back at him, opposite from the direction he planned to go.

Stepping through the doorway, he jogged down the tunnel with Kazim and their two guides right behind him, followed by his small but eager army. They would encounter a few concrete obstacles along the way, but eventually their path would take them to the basement wall of the American president’s hotel. He could hardly believe that this night was finally here. The greatest fight of his life was about to start. One night to alter the course of history. Strength flowed through him at the thought that the future was now his to decide.