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

Together they lifted him to his feet, grabbing the lapels of Kidan’s lab coat with one hand each. Giselle thrust her chin at the ship. “Tell me what kind of disease you and the other minions are loading onto the Behemoth.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She snapped her fingers and held out a hand to Ben.

He slapped the Glock into her open palm. They’d played this game before.

Giselle, a perfect actress on her favorite stage, rested the barrel against his temple at an almost casual angle, luring him in with a relaxed smile. Then the electric baton appeared from nowhere, an inch from his eyeball. A single arc sparked between the prongs.

Kidan went rigid.

Ben paced behind his teammate, slipping into an old rhythm. “You failed to answer her question. She hates that. So here’s the deal. Answer the next question or lose an eye. And before you choose, please understand we know more than we’re letting on. Lie to us, and my associate will use her cattle prod.”

Giselle didn’t have to repeat her question.

“We engineered a new bacterium. W-weaponized plague. Multiple forms.”

“Multiple forms?” Ben stopped pacing and squinted at him. “How so?”

Kidan hesitated.

The prongs crackled.

“They serve d-d-different purposes. The one on the ship is highly contagious. The other kills a single victim and dies before it can spread.”

A single victim. Rome. The contagious version worried Ben far more. What was Leviathan planning to unleash? Hadn’t the world suffered enough? “Show us. Take us to your lab and bring up the data. I want proof. And . . . formulas.”

Giselle shot him a look that said Formulas? Really?

Ben walked out of Kidan’s sightline and shrugged. He had no idea what microbiologists called them, but the bio-death-merchant career field had to include something like formulas.

The good doctor seemed to take his meaning. “I can’t.”

The prongs crackled again, lighting up his face.

“B-because he confiscated them. He took my data, my samples. Jupiter took it all.”

Ben had to shush the man because his voice had gone up too many octaves. Maybe Giselle was a little too good at her job.

“Jupiter,” she said. “He’s your boss, yes?”

“Yes.” Kidan tried and failed to push the back of his head through the forklift’s steel frame, unable to escape the cattle prod. “He took everything. I swear.”

I swear.

A little fear makes lies obvious. The idea that fear tactics including the threat of bodily harm have no place in an interrogation is a twenty-first-century invention, ignoring centuries of practical experience. A good field interrogator knows that, yes, fear brings lies, but it also makes those lies stand out, enabling the interrogator to get at the truth. An individual locked in fight-or-flight mode loses guile and reverts to childish tactics like I swear and other pointless oaths.

Kidan’s I swear, told Ben the words preceding it were a lie. He took everything. Not true. The scientist–slash–death merchant, unwilling to let his master take complete control of his valuable creation, had held something back—maybe a lot.

“Everything.” Ben clicked his tongue. “Too bad. In that case, we’re done here.” He walked behind Giselle and let his fingers graze the small of her back. The same old routine. “This place is too hot. We need to go. Don’t leave any evidence behind.”

The prongs crackled again, moving closer.

“All right. All right. Don’t hurt me. I . . . I kept copies.”

Ben put his face close enough to Kidan’s to let the man smell his breath. He used one finger to tilt the baton up and away. “Where?”

54

“Can we talk about the hair?” Ben lifted his gaze to the Jag’s rearview mirror, meeting Giselle’s eyes.

“Now?”

“Yes, now. It’s bugging me.”

“Let’s get off the property first, yes?”

Kidan drove, with Ben beside him holding the prod and Giselle behind him depressing the seatback fabric with the Glock. The two had assured the scientist that despite what he might have seen in the movies, the bullet would happily pass through the cloth and aluminum to sever his spine, so he’d better keep his mouth shut at the gate.

He did. The fence rolled back, and the guard waved them through.

“Good,” Ben said, patting Kidan on the arm. “Now. Take us home. I can’t wait to see what kind of luxury selling out mankind will buy.”

The scientist claimed he kept copies of everything on his laptop at home, a fifteen-minute drive from the port. The management kid with the New York accent had mentioned the Behemoth shipping out in three hours. That gave Ben and Giselle time to get the data, but not enough time to convince the local authorities to stop the ship, especially with Ben’s current reputation. They’d have to find a way on board and do this themselves. They could do it—together. Ben had been fighting this battle alone. A well-trained teammate made all the difference.

He waited until the complex’s blue glow faded from the mirror before pressing Giselle again. “The hair, Giselle. Why amber?” It bugged him. A spy on the run often changed hair color, but she’d chosen a color so close to the one he’d picked for Clara.

Giselle tossed her disheveled locks back and forth like a bad shampoo commercial, toying with him again. “What’s wrong? I thought you’d like it.”

“Why would I like it?”

“Morocco, silly. In the souk?” She widened her eyes and nodded at Kidan, indicating she couldn’t be more specific in front of an enemy. “At the start of the job, you said, ‘Watch the lady with the amber hair. She’s too pretty to be out here on her own.’ Too pretty, you said.” Giselle pushed out a lip. “I was jealous.”

Too pretty. Ben remembered those words. Maybe that experience had influenced his choice of hair color for Clara too. He nodded. “I guess that covers it.”

“Covers what?”

“Nothing.”

Kidan coughed. “I can park and get out if you two want to talk.”

Ben raised the cattle prod.

The scientist pushed his body against his door to keep clear. “Or I can drive, if you’re in a hurry. Do you want