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

A flash of gray appeared in the lamplight, crashing against Duval’s temple. His eyes went wide and a rasp escaped his lips as he fell forward to his knees. Clara stood behind him, holding a chunk of stone from a cathedral statue.

“What did you do?” Ben asked.

She set the stone on the ground and lifted her hands away, leaving half of a scorched shepherd’s face to stare up at the night sky. “I’ll put it back. I swear.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

Trailing blood, Duval rolled over and aimed his gun at Clara. Ben kicked it away, then fell to his knee, driving a punch down into the same spot Clara had hit with the rock.

The cop went still. Ben grabbed him by the ankles, dragging him toward the steps. “We have to move. Help me.”

She stared at him.

“Now, Clara!”

She picked up the revolver and aimed at Duval.

“Don’t you fire that thing.” Ben spoke the words as a growl. “A gunshot’ll bring every cop in Paris down on us. Plus, I’m not making you into a cop killer, dirty or not.” He kept dragging Duval, around the stone rail and down the stairs. The man’s head bounced on every other step.

Clara followed in a daze, holding the gun in both hands. “He . . . He was going to kill you.”

“Story of my life.”

She never helped him, only watched, as Ben laid Duval out flat on the river walk, under the bridge. He removed Duval’s belt, flipped him over, and bound his hands, then flipped him again and went through his pockets. The wallet went in the river—after Ben confiscated the cash, of course. And he found two moon clips of .38 Special to feed the revolver.

Cautiously, he took the gun from Clara. “How about I hold on to this for you, hmm? This one came with extra bullets, so it’s worth keeping.” When she didn’t respond, he touched her cheek. “Hey, you with me? Where’s Otto?”

“In the cathedral. Asleep.”

“Good. That’s good. Why don’t you go get him while I stay here and clean up this mess? Grab my go-bag too. We’re leaving.”

19

At the schoolhouse, Colonel Hale had opened Ben’s Escape and Evasion course by extolling the virtues of fog. A man-made smokescreen is, by its very nature, also a signal. A Mark 18 smoke grenade obscures your activity on a battlefield, but it also declares your position to the enemy. Fog and mist are natural. Fog a gift from the Almighty.

The rivers running through the larger European cities make fog nightly, and in most, it grows densest in winter. Utilities and tunnels running under the water pull heat from the city. When the night air trapped between the channel walls grows cold, the warm spray at the surface creates a blanket of vapor, thickest in the wee hours. Even advanced thermal sensors struggle to penetrate its natural cover. Spies and the specialists who hunt them both have a name for this effect.

“We call it the smuggler’s mist.” Ben helped Clara up onto the deck of a houseboat, secured for the winter at a post not far from the place they’d left Duval. The vapor had grown so thick, he couldn’t see the channel wall, less than ten meters away. “Surveillance guys hate it. Plays havoc with every form of optical sensor. Thermal, infrared—doesn’t matter. Cops searching with their naked eyeballs alone don’t stand a chance.”

Stealing the houseboat’s tiny skiff required no more effort than cutting a line with his KA-BAR and turning a crank. Together they lowered it to the water, and Ben loosened the tarp’s stern end. He climbed in. “Give me the dog.”

“Otto.”

“Whatever.”

“If you are going to steal a boat,” she said, handing him the dachshund, “why not one with a motor? Won’t it be faster?”

Otto paddled his legs in desperation until Ben had him safely on the skiff floor, nestled on a life preserver under the aft bench. “We need stealth, not speed.” He held out a hand. “You next.”

She clearly hadn’t spent much time in small watercraft. The skiff appropriated her nervousness, wobbling so much as she stepped in that even Otto gave her a frustrated look. Ben steadied her all the way down to the bench. He didn’t let go of her hand, long after she’d settled, studying her face. Her timing had been impeccable. How would Duval have finished his last statement if Clara hadn’t slammed a priceless chunk of masonry into his temple? Before we see who’s fastest, you should know something. The girl—

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Clara asked.

“It’s nothing.” He let go and looked away. “I mean . . . I’m not.”

She lifted the KA-BAR from the houseboat deck, slapping the hilt into his palm. “Don’t forget this.”

“I won’t.”

When he opened his go-bag and dropped the knife in, Clara reached in after it. Going for the revolver? He flinched.

She drew out a protein bar, frowning at his response. “What’s wrong? You don’t want me to have this? You said to eat one if I got hungry.”

“Right. Sure.”

She set the wrapped bar on her knees and dove in again.

“Hey,” Ben said.

“I need one for Otto too.”

“The dog?”

“You want him to starve?”

The dachshund raised his head, releasing something between a mutter and growl, as if Ben was riding on the edge of his good graces.

Along with the second egg white bar, Clara drew out a thick roll wrapped in cellophane. “Forget egg whites. We should be feeding him steak. There must be thousands of euros in this roll.”

“Ten thousand, to be exact.” Ben closed the bag before she could start counting the rest. “Going on the run gets expensive. For instance—” He plucked the roll from her fingers, poked a hole in the center, and pulled out a 500-euro note the way he might pull a Kleenex from a box. He crumpled it into a ball and tossed it onto the houseboat deck before pushing away. They drifted noiselessly