No Fortunate Son (Pike Logan, #7)(71)

49




By the fourth ring I was convinced Knuckles was going to blow me off, making me wonder if his team was really onto something. That would be extremely odd, since I was sure Jennifer and I were tearing up the true thread, which had come through Ireland, not Morocco. There was no way some Somali ferry receipt was going to lead to the hostages.

He answered, saying, “Still on your own, huh?”

I laughed and said, “No. I’ve replaced your sorry ass. I pulled in Nung.”

“Nung? From Thailand? Seriously?”

“Yeah. I met him here in Paris last night. I needed someone to help out, and Kurt seems to believe you simpletons know more about this situation than I do. Which we both know is a mistake.”

“Not this time, Pike.” He gave me the lowdown on the Snapchat video, and for the first time I began to wonder if I was chasing phantoms. But I couldn’t be. I had the pendant. And the pendant had been found because of the Serbs.

He continued, “The housing complex is in some area known for African immigrants. A bad-guy land even on good days. The French have had a lot of riots and protests there. It fits perfectly with what we know about the Somalis’ travel history. They’re here, and so are the hostages.”

“You sure that video is real?”

“I am. You sure that pendant is real?”

“Okay, okay. You just keep your head down. Let GIGN do the work. Something’s not right about this whole thing. Hopefully it’s me, but it might be you.”

“No worries. These guys are pretty switched on. What the hell are you and Koko doing, anyway? You got Nung robbing a jewelry store or something? Kurt said you had the Taskforce translate some goofy shit.”

The cards from our penthouse photos had ended up being in Serbo-Croatian, and they’d detailed a jewelry heist. Apparently, the Serbs belonged to some ring called the Pink Panthers, and they were planning a hit in Paris. I’d spent the train ride from Brussels doing a little research, and it turned out they were some seriously badass jewel thieves.

Mostly ex-military from the bad-old days in Bosnia, they’d cut their teeth smuggling arms during the Serbian embargo, then had moved on to bigger and better things. I’d stumbled upon a YouTube video of a hit in Dubai where they’d literally driven two Audis into an indoor mall, straight through the glass wall of a high-end jewelry store. They’d cleaned the place out, then simply driven out of the mall, never to be seen again.

Their target in Paris was the Bulgari jewelry store just off the famed strip of Parisian shopping known as the Champs-élysées. I didn’t really care about the robbery, though.

I said, “Yeah, we’re conducting a stakeout, waiting on the police to snap these *s up. The getaway driver is an Irishman named Braden. He was on the surveillance tape I got in Cambridge, and apparently, he’s going to transport whatever they take, letting the Serbs cross the border afterward without any issues. My role ends when he gets snagged.”

I heard nothing for a minute, then, “Uh . . . You talked to Kurt lately?”

“Last night, before we came down. I gave him a complete dump. Why?”

“Before the Snapchat came in?”

“I guess so. Why do I get the feeling you know more than me? What’s up?”

“You’re not getting any police. They’re not going to show.”

“Why? Kurt told me he’d get a cutout from the FBI to link up with the gendarmerie. They’re supposed to be all over this place. The Pink Panthers are a big deal, and a successful robbery here would be pretty embarrassing. They won’t miss it.”

“Well, that would be true. If we told them. We didn’t.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“The hostages take priority. The president made the call not to tell them about your lead. He didn’t want to split efforts. He couldn’t care less about a jewel heist, and he was afraid the GIGN would get tasked with both targets. The police capability would be diluted. He didn’t want that. He wants them completely focused on the hostages. On me.”

What the hell? I felt the anger rise and saw Jennifer give me a question with her eyes. “And he wasn’t going to tell me that? He was going to let me sit out here and watch it go down? Christ. I don’t even have any weapons with me.”

“Pike, things have been a little hectic here. They spent all night getting the ball rolling on my operation. Kurt’s got to put national security ahead of his niece. Don’t blame him. He might be calling any minute.”

I said, “I gotta go.”

“Pike, don’t do something you’ll regret.”

“I’m not the one who’s going to regret that decision.”


* * *

Kurt introduced Creed, then took a seat in the back of the Situation Room, wondering how he was going to get grilled about Breedlove with all the people floating around the table who were uncleared for Taskforce operations. As far as they knew, he worked in the NSC with Creed. His cell vibrated, and he saw it was Pike, immediately realizing he hadn’t told him the new reality of no French help. Alexander Palmer started talking, and he shunted the call to voice mail. He’ll figure it out. I’ll call him later.

Palmer said, “Creed, you sure about the location you found?”