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

10K. The increased soreness worried him. Lifting his shirt to check, he’d found the second mark, joined to the first by one of the black vein-like extensions.

Ben wondered if Giselle’s estimate of days might be optimistic.

He straightened his clothes and body, looking as healthy as a man with crusted frostbite blisters on his face and carrying the plague could look, and walked past the hotel doorman with the confident stride of a paying guest.

The desk clerk posed a larger challenge. Ben needed to convince her to call down a recent acquaintance to whom he’d never given his name—an acquaintance he hoped could solve his next big challenge.

Tess had come through, as always. Now, with little money, no weapon, and no passport, Ben had to find passage to the United States, and fast. He waited his turn at the check-in desk, ignoring worried glances from a young couple seated in the lobby and surrounded by far too much luggage. He pitied the taxi driver coming to take them to the airport.

“Buenos días, señor. Puedo servirte?”

Ben blinked. His turn had come. The clerk had acknowledged him. Where was his brain? “Pardon?”

“Ah. You are American.” The young woman gave him a condescending smile. “I asked if I might help you.”

“Yes. Thank you. I arranged to meet a new friend here for breakfast. I think he overslept. Will you ring him for me?”

“Yes, of course. The name?”

“Basile.”

“Basile what, sir? I’ll need a surname.”

How could he be so foolish? He’d never gotten Basile’s last name.

“Sir? The surname?” Her smile morphed from condescension to suspicion. “I will need it so I can check our registry.”

“I’m so sorry. I’ve forgotten. Like I said, he’s a new friend. But I owe him breakfast, and I’d hate to welch on this debt. It’s bad form and bad luck.” He shrugged. “How many Basiles can you possibly have staying here at this moment?”

The clerk gave him a flat look.

Ben slid a fifty-euro note across the desk, the last one in his pocket. “Please. It’s important.”

She accepted the note and shifted her gaze to her computer screen, expressing her exasperation with a steady, heavy tapping of the keyboard’s down arrow. After several seconds of this, she frowned, eyes still on the screen. “As it turns out, there are two. Basile de la Fontaine and Basile Palomer.”

This time, he didn’t hesitate. Ben snapped his fingers and pointed at her. “Palomer. That’s it. Well done. Tell him Hey-you is here to see him.”

Another flat look.

“Trust me. He’ll understand. Just make the call.”

He’d taken a gamble, but the odds were heavily in his favor. Palomer—French for “pigeon keeper.” A last name like that meant birds and bird terms were an inescapable part of Basile’s life, hence The Lazy Ostrich. Besides, Ben doubted he’d find a single De La Fontaine running a fishing trawler anywhere on the planet.

The girl spoke Spanish on the phone, and the Basile on the other end seemed to understand. Had Ben’s Basile given any indication he spoke Spanish? He began to question his choice.

She looked at him sideways, nodding, frowning, said something sharp, and set the phone in its cradle.

Ben raised his eyebrows.

The clerk pressed her lips together. “Señor Palomer remembers a Hey-you—I think. He did not sound very sure. Nevertheless, he’ll be right down.”

Outside, an irritated cabbie argued with the young couple from the lobby, probably attempting to explain the significant difference between the volume of his trunk and the collective volume of their luggage. Ben claimed the couch where they’d been sitting and watched the elevators.

Moments later, the doors of the center elevator opened to reveal a man who looked nothing like the skipper Ben remembered. From his loafers and white slacks to his straw fedora, the clean-shaven Basile waltzing through the lobby might never have dropped a net in his life, except for the flash of black on his belt. Ben saw it only for a nanosecond when the breeze of his stride parted the man’s linen sport coat—a scaling knife in a black sheath.

Ben stood, and would’ve laughed if not for the growing ache in his bones. “I hate to be trite,” he said in French. “But you clean up nice. You look fifteen years younger than you did on your boat.”

Basile removed his fedora and bowed. “I’ll take that as a compliment, which is the manner I believe you intended. The Spanish beaches have been kind to me.” As he replaced the hat, concern creased his brow. “But I see they have not been as kind to you. Are you okay, my friend?”

Ben let the gravity in his expression answer the question. “We need to talk, Basile.” He glanced around the lobby, noting the number of ears that might perk up with alarm at whispered words like plague and attack. “Let’s go for a walk.”

Few beachgoers disturbed the sands of Playa del Cabanyal. The early hour and December’s cooler weather afforded Ben that advantage. A fisherman tugged at his line. A pair of women jogged together, insulated from each other by their earbuds and whatever music or podcasts played on their phones. No one else.

Ben waited for the joggers to pass, then drew a breath to make his case to Basile. The act of expanding his lungs doubled him over in pain.

Basile bent beside him, laying a hand on his back. “You really aren’t okay, are you?”

“Don’t touch me.”

The fisherman jerked his hand away. “My apologies. But I am no threat to—”

“It’s not that.” Ben straightened, groaning. “Please keep a little distance, for your own safety.”

“A social distance, you mean?”

Ben set off again without answering the nervous joke. He set a slower pace than before.

Basile followed, walking beside him, but staying more than an arm’s length away. He let out a low whistle. “So we are no longer talking in hypotheticals, as we did on the Ostrich. The madman found the plague.”

“Correct. My enemies injected me with a weaponized version.” Ben could see the growing fear in Basile’s eyes. “Try to relax, the version I