The Nameless Ones by John Connolly

Chapter XXXIV

Louis’s flight arrived at Paris-Charles-de-Gaulle Airport shortly after 9 a.m. He took a taxi to a small hotel in the 16th arrondissement, regarded as the most boring area in the city. Nothing exciting had happened in the 16th arrondissement since 1794, when an explosion at the Grenelle gunpowder factory in the almost equally boring 15th arrondissement caused body parts to soar across the Seine and land in the streets and yards of its marginally more nondescript neighbor. He supposed that, after a rain of limbs, centuries of tedium might seem like a blessed relief.

Louis checked into a room decorated by someone who had never encountered a shade of gray he didn’t like, and waited for the arrival of a courier carrying four Rohrbaugh R9 Stealth Elite pistols, each weighing less than a pound and built without a slide lock, magazine release, safety catch, or sights, all to ensure that the weapon didn’t catch on clothing. The Rohrbaughs retailed for in excess of a thousand dollars each, and the four Osprey suppressors that accompanied them cost only slightly less, but Louis’s delivery had still totaled €12,000, the premium reflecting the various gradations of illegality involved in the transfer of the goods, and the absence of any questions afterward.

Louis trusted Harris about as much as he trusted Ross, which meant that he did not trust him at all, but he had fulfilled government contracts in the past, even if they had never been formally identified as such. Many administrations preferred to farm out their wet work, in part because this made it easier to avoid telling the truth at inquiries, but also because men and women willing to kill at close quarters without the imprimatur offered by a uniform, or even a plausible reason for the sanction, were comparatively few, and often ill-suited to the strictures of intelligence agencies. Even the Russians, who were as close to conscienceless as one could get in this modern age, liked to maintain the illusion of distance and the comfort of deniability.

If, by some misfortune, Louis were to be apprehended by the French, he could anticipate no help from Harris or anyone else with US government credentials. He would be expected to keep his mouth shut and suck up his punishment like a big boy. Then, in a year or two, he would be quietly repatriated from a French jail, in theory to serve out the remainder of his sentence on home ground, but in reality to walk free with his anonymity compromised and his ability to perform any task riskier than taking out the trash permanently limited.

Louis did not intend to be caught by the French.

He checked the pistols. All four were new, but his premium had also ensured that a hundred rounds of Speer Gold Dots had been run through them before delivery. Two boxes of Gold Dots, fifty rounds each, came with the Rohrbaughs, but Louis hoped that would be significantly more than required. The ammunition was on the house because Louis was a returning customer and loyalty deserved its rewards.

Louis turned on the TV in the room, keeping the volume slightly louder than might have been preferable for his fellow guests. In the bathroom, he test-fired each of the pistols with an Osprey to muffle the sound; to absorb the bullets, he used a stack of old Bibles couriered from Amsterdam for just that purpose. Once he was satisfied that the guns were fit for use, he put the ruined Bibles in an anonymous white cotton bag and dumped them in a trash can on the way to buy an espresso and a croissant. He carried his purchases to the Passy Cemetery, watching always for recurring faces. He was curious to see if Harris had tagged him, but no one showed signs of taking an undue interest in him, and the cemetery was quiet as he sat by a grave and ate his pastry. He wandered the tree-lined avenues of Passy for a time before taking the Métro to Jaurès and walking the rest of the way to Stalingrad. While he could have traveled direct to the station, he knew better than to leave that kind of trail.

Aleksej Marković’s hotel overlooked the Quai de l’Oise, and was about as unprepossessing as a pension could get without hanging dead rats from its sign. According to the information provided by Harris, Marković was staying in room 42. He might even be in there now, Louis thought. A call to the hotel would confirm this, but might also spook the target. Either way, it had been made clear to Louis that he was not to move against Marković until the Vuksans’ cargo had been safely apprehended or neutralized. Harris and his people didn’t want any more jihadis roaming free. The French had more than enough of them to contend with already.

Louis wondered how many people the Americans had on Marković. Two teams would be standard practice, and three would be better. But if they were keeping tabs on the Serb – audio and visual – then any action against him by Louis would also be recorded, and Louis was averse to shooting a man while agents of his own government recorded the event.

He had also briefly considered the possibility of taking Marković alive, if the opportunity presented itself, in the hope of obtaining from him the whereabouts of the Vuksans, but had dismissed it on a number of grounds: the risks involved, the likelihood or otherwise of Marković having anything more than an email address or burner number for the brothers, and his willingness to share that information with Louis, even under duress. Louis wasn’t in the torture business, but he knew enough about it to be aware that any intelligence obtained through abuse was often unreliable and could be difficult or time-consuming to verify. He was also certain that the Vuksans would have procedures in place should Marković fail to make contact, which meant that whatever Louis might learn from him would ultimately prove useless. No, the Viennese lawyer Frend still seemed the best path to the Vuksans, which made Marković dispensable. In addition, his death would alarm the Vuksans, and any reaction from them would create ripples that might be traced back to their source.

He found a bench, removed a book from his pocket, and commenced not reading it. He spent an hour watching the comings and goings at the hotel, but saw no trace of Marković. It didn’t matter. By the time Louis was done, he had a better sense of the environment, to which he added by taking a stroll through the neighborhood. He checked his watch: the overnight Delta flight from JFK to Paris-Charles-de-Gaulle had landed by now, so it was time to return to his hotel and wait for his guests to arrive. While he hoped to take care of Marković himself, circumstances dictated that this might not be possible. Whatever happened over the next twenty-four hours, one thing was certain: Aleksej Marković would not be leaving Paris alive.

At Paris-Charles-de-Gaulle, two slight figures passed through immigration with hand baggage only, attracting barely a second glance from the staff. Both men wore glasses, had neatly trimmed black hair, and spoke heavily accented English. They carried US and Japanese passports, but were traveling on the former to avoid any questions about their arrival from a US airport. They smiled a lot, because they had learned that Western people held preconceptions about Asians, both positive and negative, which could be used to gain an advantage. Over the years, they had carefully cultivated an image that traded on harmlessness, politeness, and conviviality, even though they had once killed a man by adding sodium cyanide to the chlorine-dosing system of his indoor swimming pool. This had been carried out at the instigation of Louis. The two men always enjoyed assisting Louis. He paid up front, and had been known to present them with intellectually stimulating challenges. Through him, they got to encounter new and interesting people, and find new and interesting ways to kill them.