Fear No Evil(Alex Cross #29)(39)

When the tall agent reached the tarmac, he said, “Are you carrying a weapon?”

“No,” I said.

“We must be sure. Turn around. Hands on the stair railings.”

I did as he asked and spread my legs as well. He patted me down thoroughly and then used a metal-detecting wand.

“Passport,” the female agent said when he was done. “And your phone, please.”

I got both from the top pocket of my carry-on and handed them to her. “Can I ask what this is all about?”

“You can ask,” she said. “But we cannot give you answers because we do not know them. We are here to transport you, nothing more.”

The big agent’s name tag read HEBERT; the female agent’s read RIVIèRE.

“Where are we going?” I asked as they led me toward a waiting black van.

“To a place with no name,” Hebert said.

Rivière said, “Which is why we cannot let you see the route there.”

I didn’t like it but I climbed inside the van. “Please, can you at least tell me if my wife is alive? I believe she was caught in the middle of the terrorist attack in the seventeenth arrondissement last night.”

“Again, Monsieur Cross,” Hebert said as I took a seat by a blacked-out window facing black drapes separating us from the driver, “we do not know. In terror cases, this is how it works until authorities decide to talk.”

The rear door shut. The van started moving.

“But the attack must have been reported on the radio,” I said. “There must be basic publicly known facts you can share with me. Are there confirmed dead?”

Rivière looked at Hebert, who said, “There are multiple confirmed dead and wounded. Victims have not yet been identified.”

Multiple confirmed dead… “What else?”

“The terrorists were on rooftops shooting down at people in the streets.”

“Arrests?”

“None,” Hebert said. “They managed to elude police and remain at large.”

“No leads?”

“Not our job, sir. The investigation continues.”

I had no idea where they were going or how long we drove. I was so tired, my chin dropped and I dozed deep and dark.

Rivière shook me awake. “We’re here, Dr. Cross.”

The van’s door slid back. We were in an underground garage facing a set of bulletproof glass doors. Two armed agents stood between the van and the door as I stepped out. Rivière and Hebert stayed with the van when the doors slid closed.

The new agents walked behind me down a short hall to an elevator, which opened for us. I immediately caught a whiff of an unmistakable odor: the cleaning liquid used to scour morgues.





Chapter





44




I wobbled on my feet and had to put my hand out on the wall of the elevator to keep from collapsing. Clearly, they were taking me to identify Bree’s body.

As the elevator doors closed, I breathed in through my nose again and smelled that same vile odor I associate with autopsies. We rose. My stomach churned. I thought I was going to be violently ill in the small space.

Bree is dead. Why else bring me to a morgue?

The elevator stopped. The doors opened into a large, high-ceilinged space that bustled with a good fifty agents, most in plainclothes and carrying pistols in shoulder harnesses or hip holsters, working phones and making notes in French on huge whiteboards set up all around the room.

Here and there stood several large video screens. One showed a 3-D rendition of what I assumed was a Parisian street.

There was a bigger crowd standing around the farthest screen, which was showing an aerial view of that same street. We walked up to the back of the crowd, where a woman in her fifties turned, smiled, and shook my hand.

“Inspector Simone Marché with French counterterrorism, Dr. Cross,” she whispered. “We know your work and welcome you.”

I was about to say, Can you please tell me if my wife’s alive? when I heard a weary but familiar voice speaking in French.

“Bree!” I shouted.

My wife stood in front of the screen next to a tall, willowy woman with steel-gray hair. Bree looked like she’d been through hell, but when she saw me, she grinned with relief. Agents moved aside as we walked to each other, both with tears in our eyes. We threw our arms around each other and people began to clap.

“Oh, Alex, you don’t know how much I needed you here.”

“And you don’t know what it took me to get here.”

She drew back from the embrace. “Thank you. For loving me enough to…” Bree couldn’t go on and buried her head in my chest, weeping.

Inspector Marché came up and said, “She’s been through a lot, and we haven’t been easy on her.”

The willowy woman walked up and introduced herself as Marianne Le Tour of Bluestone Group’s Paris office.

“Can she leave now?” Le Tour asked Marché. “So she can get some sleep?”

“We should hold her,” Marché said. “There is still the matter of the gun.”

“She had a legitimate permit,” Le Tour said. “And thank God she had the gun, Inspector, or who knows if Valentina Ponce would still be alive.”