The Paris Betrayal by James Hannibal (beach read .TXT) 📕

“A masterful thriller is created by a masterful writer, and James R. Hannibal is at the top of my list. I devoured every page with the lights on!”

DiAnn Mills, DiAnnMills.com, author of Airborne

“James Hannibal once again displays his dazzling prose and ability to keep even the more experienced readers guessing. In The Paris Betrayal, Hannibal sets his hook deep and early, then drags you through a riveting, edge-of-your-seat story. Another gripping, high-octane book from one of the best thriller writers in the business.”

Simon Gervais, former RCMP counterterrorism officer and bestselling author of Hunt Them Down

“Riveting and action-packed! The Paris Betrayal is everything you want in a thriller—suspense, intrigue, and white-knuckle action. Hannibal has a knack for keeping you guessing in a plot that moves at a breakneck speed. This is one you don’t want to miss!”

Ronie Kendig, bestselling author of The Tox Files

© 2021 by James R. Hannibal

Published by Revell

a division of Baker Publishing Group

PO Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287

www.revellbooks.com

Ebook edition created 2021

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

ISBN 978-1-4934-3045-1

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Contents

Cover

Endorsements

Half Title Page

Title Page

Copyright Page

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Author Note

About the Author

Back Ads

Back Cover

1

PIAZZA DEL POPOLA

ROME

PRESENT DAY

From a rooftop perch, Ben Calix watched the courier leave the Tiber and cross the piazza. He traced his scope from the man’s temple down to his forearm. No cuff secured his wrist to the steel briefcase. Foolish. Ben’s team had been tracking that case since Morocco. This morning, they’d claim their treasure.

“Micro, Saber has eyes on.”

“I hate that call sign.”

Ben frowned in Dylan’s direction, his young Welsh hacker-slash-technician, out of sight and grumbling in the ancient sewer beneath Rome’s Piazza del Popolo. Smelly, but warmer than Ben’s post. The night’s frost still whitened the stone lip of the roof. He shivered, returning his eye to the scope. “Now is not the time, Micro.”

“Right. Sorry. Micro copies your eyes-on call. I’m flipping the switch. The system is hot.”

The day’s first tourists filtered out onto the streets—the early risers and the overzealous fathers dragging bleary-eyed kids. In this city, even in the dead of winter, an operative could always count on a crowd. Rome—the true neutral ground of the espionage world. The Swiss claim neutrality, but everyone knows they have an underlying conscience. Rome does not.

The Italians maintain a true laissez-faire approach. Americans, Russians, Iranians—everyone does their own thing with impunity. Bullets must fly in the open streets for the Italian cops to take an interest.

Ben dialed in the scope’s rangefinder. “Nightingale, he’s twenty meters out. You’re on.”

Giselle Laurent, a platinum blonde for this op and sporting faux fur, tipped her oversize sunglasses down the bridge of her nose. “I see him. Poor little man.” She set off from her post at the piazza’s sphynx fountain on a course to intercept.

“See,” Dylan said, jamming up the comms. “That’s what I’m talking about. The Company gave you Saber, like you’re the tip of the spear or something. Miss Tall, Questionably Blonde, and Gorgeous gets Nightingale. And what do I get? Micro. What are they implying?”

“They’re implying you’re short. Shut up. She’s almost there.” Ben wiggled a black box in his fingers, as if the kid could see it. “The thing you gave me. Do I need to point it like a TV remote?”

“A TV remote? Nice, Grandpa.”

“I’m barely thirty.”

“You’re making my point. It’s not a TV remote or a gun. No need to point it at anything. The antenna is omnidirectional.”

“Uh. Sure. The antenna.” Ben turned the box over and found a black rubber nub buried in a hole in the top. He grabbed it with his teeth and pulled. “Got it.”

Down in the piazza, Giselle hit her target full on with a cappuccino. Ben winced at her squeal, piercing despite the comm link’s static. She bellowed at the target in French about fur coats and coffee stains, poking him in the chest. He backed away, expertly steered into a lamppost with a false utility box Dylan had placed there the night before. Trapped, the courier set his case down to fend off the crazy fur lady.

In the middle of her tirade, Giselle spoke the trigger word. “Mink.”

Ben pressed the switch.

By the time the courier reached for his case again, Dylan’s contraption had swapped it with a duplicate—same make and weight, thanks to Giselle’s photos and Dylan’s calculations. A moment later, Ben heard the buzz of a motorbike in his earpiece—Dylan tearing away through the sewers with the prize. “Micro has the package. Contents look good. I’m off.”

Ben didn’t envy the courier, poked and swatted by Giselle before breakfast and destined for a pre-lunch beating once the buyer opened a case full of blank papers and empty steel tubes. But he’d brought the beating on himself with his sins. Ben and Giselle wouldn’t interfere. They’d need to watch the buyer to see what he did next, now that they’d messed with his world.

With the real case in hand and the buyer under surveillance, the Company would finally get a trace on the organization behind the destruction in Munich, St. Petersburg, and Tokyo. Each strike built upon the ferocity and death toll of the last until Rotterdam, when the bomber had botched his job and killed only himself.

Rotterdam was the break the Company needed. An undetonated fragment proved the attacks involved a new type of explosive—CRTX, five times as powerful as C4 and previously considered impossible to make. With the bomb compound identified, the Company field operatives went into overdrive searching