Suspects(30)
“They get a little out of control here, sir.” The CIA agent in charge smiled at him. “You’re smart to pick up a loaner.” It wasn’t a large gun, but if anything untoward happened, he wanted to be able to protect Theo, and the weapon they were lending him would do the job. He felt better having it than not. He never traveled armed, unless absolutely necessary. It complicated things at the airport, and he hadn’t expected to need a weapon in Paris, and was surprised by how extreme the preparations in the streets looked. He put it securely in his waistband at his back, which he thought Theo was less likely to notice. The guards in her employ were heavily armed, so it wouldn’t be entirely unfamiliar to her, but surely a surprise that he was armed too. And hard to explain why he’d need a gun, as a lawyer.
“I’ll get it back to you on Monday,” he promised, after signing a slip for the loan, and then he loaded it with the bullets he’d been given. They gave him an embassy pass to go with it, in case he got stopped by police, which they said wasn’t likely, and then offered him a bulletproof vest, which he declined. “I hate the damn things. I get so hot in them and I won’t need it,” he said confidently, and the agent nodded agreement. All the agents complained of the same thing.
“Watch out for the tear gas, sir,” the agent warned him. Mike walked back down the street he’d come and, once past the bulletproof barricade, was lucky enough to find a cab. He headed straight to Theo’s apartment.
He could tell the crowd was restless when he got there. People were shouting, throwing small random objects, and a few of the young men in the crowd were breaking car windows and starting to light fires when he got to her address. The cab driver motioned to him to go inside quickly, and Mike thanked him and wished him good luck. He rang the intercom, and her door guard buzzed him in, and he hurried up the stairs. Theo was waiting at the door seeming nervous, in a black sweater and jeans herself, her hair barely brushed, with no makeup, and he loved the way she looked, except for the worried expression.
“It seems like it’s getting bad out there,” Theo said. The security guards were closing the shutters, leaving one of each two open so they could see outside. The windows were all tightly closed so tear gas wouldn’t enter the apartment, and they heard the first cannons go off, shooting tear gas into the crowd. Mike was shocked at what was happening, it looked like a war zone in the most civilized city in the world.
“They were starting to set fire to cars when I got here,” he told her. He followed her into the kitchen, where she made coffee. It was only ten in the morning, and she turned the TV on so they could see what was happening on the various streets in Paris. Violence was erupting everywhere.
“Does this get them what they want?” he asked her, fascinated by it.
“No, they wind up hurt or in jail, but they do a hell of a lot of damage before that happens. It’s pathetic—and a crime what they do to the city. They actually come from other cities during protests, just to loot and burn and vandalize and destroy property. The real protestors are usually peaceful, but it’s the bad ones and the hoodlums who blend in with them who do all the damage. They shouldn’t allow them to demonstrate anymore, it always turns into this now. People forget that this is a country that loves revolution, and the French think it’s their civil right to protest about just anything. But this isn’t protesting, it’s mass destruction.” She was angry, seeing the city she loved so torn apart and damaged. They could see that violence was breaking out on the streets all over Paris, mostly in public squares and in front of national monuments. And on the fancier streets of expensive stores, rioters were breaking store windows and rushing into shops to steal whatever they could, as the police followed, grossly outnumbered.
The air outside her apartment was thick with smoke from tear gas and burning cars. The rioters were building barricades on the streets with anything they could find, even tires they ripped off cars before setting fire to them. Streets were blocked and there were seething crowds everywhere. The riot police wearing helmets and shields turned the water cannons on them after that, which barely slowed them down. The regular rioters had gas masks to protect them from the tear gas. They had come prepared, with sledgehammers to destroy cars and bus stop shelters wherever they passed. The riot police were herding them away from her building, but Mike wasn’t reassured by what he was seeing, and glad he had picked up the gun at the embassy.
They peeked outside between the shutters again, and it was a madhouse on the street. Her security guards were alert and observing at the windows. People were digging cobblestones out of the pavement and throwing them through windows, some of them wrapped in oil-soaked flaming rags to set fires in apartments once they landed. Theo’s security had placed fire extinguishers next to each window.
“Let’s stand back from the windows, Theo,” Mike told her. They could hear rocks and cobblestones hitting the walls of the building, as they aimed at the windows. He was standing close to her in her study so they could both see between the shutters, and it was a narrow opening. As she turned away from the windows with him close behind her, she found herself in his arms, looking up at him, her body pressed against his. Closing his arms around her seemed like the most natural thing to both of them. Their resistance melted away and vanished in the same moment, as he kissed her, and felt so overwhelmed with desire for her, that he couldn’t stop kissing her, and she felt as though she’d been starving for him all her life. They were both out of breath when they stopped, and they looked surprised. Neither of them had expected it to happen or wanted it to stop.