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

The cabbie eyed him in the mirror. “You know we got drugstores dis side o’ Fairfax, fren. No need ta go so fah. I show you.”

Ben waved a handful of cash. “No.” He could barely get the words out. “This one is special. My prescription is waiting. Please.”

The look the guy gave him said I should be taking you to a hospital, but he put the cab into gear without another word.

Watching to make sure the guy kept his eyes on the road, Ben pressed his evening injection against his thigh. He barely felt the prick or the medicine’s cold rush. Each injection of Tess’s cocktail made less difference than the last—little better than placebos. He only had one left. Not great. He needed to survive another day and a half.

The Baltimore port schedule put the Clementine—aka the Behemoth—in her berth at ten minutes after five, two mornings away. Dylan promised to send everything they’d learned to the Company, but he made no guarantees. He could pass the intelligence, but he couldn’t make them act.

He’d also done Ben one more favor.

The failure of Dylan’s binary theory created doubt—something the kid didn’t experience often. Playing on the uncertainty, Ben convinced him to send a message requesting a meeting with the Director. As with the intelligence, the kid made no guarantees, but he agreed to make the request on Ben’s behalf.

“Give it at least a day,” he’d said. “Thirty hours or more. This will take time to pass up the chain, and the boss might be anywhere in the world. He’ll need travel time.”

Thirty hours. Cutting it close.

If the Director believed Ben’s tale, they’d have only a small window of time left before the plague ship’s arrival. A Company team needed to stop the Behemoth in the harbor before it reached the berth without setting off the bomb. If Leviathan saw them coming, they’d detonate the nuke’s-worth of CRTX in the hold, destroying half the city and unleashing the bacteria. If the ship reached the berth, the first tanktainer the cranes lifted from the deck would also unleash the bacteria, initiating a slow release of aerosol plague.

If the Director didn’t believe his story, Ben would have the same tiny window to stop all of that himself. Impossible.

Resting his head back against the seat, he stared up through the rear window and rehearsed his story. The details grew more obscure with every passing minute. Focus came harder and harder. The empty branches passing overhead warped at the window’s edges, twisting and spinning him into delirium.

He saw Paris. His flat. Clara on the stairs. Groceries in one arm, dog in the other. The first of many similar encounters.

He’d first noticed her ice-blue eyes, partially hidden by random strands of blue hair. Maybe that’s why it bothered him so much. The blue hair stole well-deserved attention away from her eyes. Maybe. Her lips were moving, asking him a question. Ben strained to listen over the grinds and rattles of the taxi’s engine.

“We should get coffee some time—get to know each other. Good neighbors learn about each other’s lives. It helps see beyond our own tiny worlds.”

She couldn’t know about his life. No one outside the Company could know. “Sure, but I’m in a rush. Maybe some other time.”

Maybe some other time. Next week. When I come back from my trip. How many times had he put her off when she’d asked for nothing more than an hour and a cup of coffee? What he wouldn’t do to have that hour now. Ben had thrown himself into an unsanctioned relationship with a teammate instead.

But Giselle had been persuasive. Alluring.

He saw her walking with him in the forest near Chaville. They laughed and shared stories. Dylan’s unending complaints. Hale’s parochial schoolhouse wisdom. He could be himself with her. Giselle had made him feel safe.

Liar. Traitor.

Giselle sold him out. Clara ran into a sniper’s field of fire to save him.

A speed bump bounced his head off the vinyl. The taxi. The pharmacy. Ben didn’t want the cabbie pulling up to the building. He had to control what the cameras saw. He dropped his cash over the seat. “Stop here. This’ll do.”

Ben stumbled out of the taxi into the parking lot. He trudged toward the store, tripping over a speed bump, caught himself, and walked on, fighting through a fit of coughs to keep his face low and shielded from the cameras.

When the coughing fit ended, he still heard the cab’s rattling idle. The guy hadn’t driven away. Ben glanced back.

The Haitian lifted his chin. “You stay safe, fren. Get ’ealthy. Okay? You need another ride, you call. Ask for Rayan. I come.”

Ben gave him a grateful nod. He doubted he’d live long enough for a next time.

He waited under the pharmacy awning, in the security camera’s blind spot, until the cabbie drove out of sight, then limped over to the sidewalk for the two-block hike to the motel.

A police cruiser rolled up to the intersection ahead. The cop looked his way. He flashed his lights.

Ben made an abrupt turn and hurried at a hopping gate across the parking lot of a small grocery. His knee cried out for mercy. Dylan’s nonlethal rounds must have cracked something.

No coincidences. The kind Haitian cabdriver had called the cops, maybe to help a man he saw as an addict get clean, or maybe he supplemented his income by feeding them intel on the DC drug scene.

Got caught in a cab, huh? In your condition? Hale haunted him, grumbling in his ear. You know better, kid. Sloppy. Real sloppy.

“I was tired,” Ben said, ducking into a service alley between the grocery and the pharmacy. He suppressed the pain in his knee and the aches in his body and picked up his pace. “I cut a corner.”

And we know how well that goes.

“I’m almost dead. What do you want from me?”

A whoop-whoop sounded from the grocery lot—one cycle of the siren. The cop was playing this cool.

Contingencies are key, right, kid? A good spy