The Ninth Orphan (16 page)

Even though he’d passed Seventeen in one of the long corridors at DST headquarters, and actually brushed against her, Monsieur Alleget had no reason to suspect the Americans’ presence in the French secret service building. The unofficial code of silence that existed between the French secret service and the CIA was alive and well, and was never likely to be penetrated by a retired politician, no matter how influential.

Monsieur Alleget was heartened by the outcome of his meetings. Everyone he met with assured him they’d do everything in their power to help rescue Isabelle and promised they’d pass on any intelligence directly or indirectly relating to her, even if it was classified. Such was the high regard in which he was held by French Ministers and by the public he’d served so faithfully over the years.

Not satisfied with just enlisting the help of these various individuals, Monsieur Alleget embarked on his own investigation. He studied recent crimes reported in the media. This entailed laboriously scanning every recent edition of the major Parisian newspapers. Monsieur Alleget was specifically looking for crimes involving terrorist organizations or American agencies. His goal was to try to find some kind of correlation between Isabelle’s abduction and any suspicious crimes. He knew if he could find that connection, it could help finger the likely party responsible for his daughter’s abduction.

23

S
pecial Agent Cho-Wu picked his moment to enter an exclusive restaurant that was only a few streets away from the DST French Intelligence headquarters in central Paris. His MSS superiors had received reliable intelligence the French secret service was co-operating with two American agents who would be dining at this particular restaurant at this particular time. He’d been ordered to find out what he could about the agents and to learn if they were connected with the rogue American operative.

Having already confirmed his targets were in fact dining within, the crafty Chinese agent waited for a group of lunchtime patrons to enter the establishment and slipped in, unnoticed, behind them. As the maitre-de attended to the others, Cho-Wu sidled up to a coat rack and placed a tiny electronic bug under the collar of a fashionable suit jacket he’d seen one of his targets remove on arrival. He briefly looked around to make sure nobody had seen him, before leaving undetected.

In the restaurant’s dining room, Cho-Wu’s unsuspecting targets, Kentbridge and Seventeen, dined together at a table for two. Seventeen pecked at her food while her superior addressed her in hushed tones. As always, the two were all business.

Seventeen nodded as she listened. Outwardly, she seemed calm. Inwardly, she was seething. She hated taking orders from someone she felt superior to.

Short of pissing against a wall, she backed herself in any department against Kentbridge – be that physical, mental or whatever. Seventeen believed she’d have a better chance of tracking down Nine if left to her own resources. She reminded herself she didn’t need any over-the-hill, middle-aged, pen-pusher telling her what to do, no matter how highly he may be regarded in Omegan circles.

As soon as Seventeen finished her meal, Kentbridge looked hard at his subordinate. “I’ll see you in ten,” he said by way of dismissal. Seventeen departed the restaurant without so much as a goodbye. As she boarded a taxi, she never noticed Cho-Wu observing her from further along the street.

Kentbridge remained in the restaurant, making notes on a pad. A couple of minutes later, he left some Euros on the table before retrieving his fashionable suit jacket from the coat rack in the restaurant’s foyer. Outside, he climbed into a waiting car which took him to the nearby DST headquarters. There, he found Seventeen waiting for him as arranged. As they entered the building, neither took any notice of a car with dark-tinted windows which had followed Kentbridge from the restaurant.

Minutes later, in the DST’s meeting room, Kentbridge and Seventeen sat facing their superior, Omega director Andrew Naylor, who had flown across the Atlantic to deal with
the Nine situation
as he called it. Also in the room were two French agents. All were oblivious to the microscopic bug under the collar of Kentbridge's suit jacket.

The use of the DST headquarters had been set up for the Omegans by CIA Deputy Director Marcia Wilson, Omega’s chief mole within that agency. Like the British before them, nobody in the French secret service was remotely aware of the Omega Agency. They simply accepted the three Americans were employees of the CIA and nothing more.

Naylor was far from happy. In the course of the debrief, he variously referred to Nine as
a goddamn traitor
and
a scheming son-of-a-bitch
. Naylor scratched his pock-marked skin and his lazy eye was twitching overtime as he addressed Kentbridge and Seventeen. He’d entrusted them with the task of bringing Nine to heel and so far they’d failed. He made his disappointment clear to them.

“
He’s tricky, sir,” Kentbridge said defensively. Like Seventeen, Kentbridge hated having to answer to anyone – especially Naylor. He glanced at Seventeen then back to his superior. “We’re going to need a little more time.”

“
Time is a luxury we don’t have, Tommy! We need that location now,” Naylor said, referring to the newly discovered treasure hoard in the Philippines. He wasn’t about to refer to the co-ordinates Nine had or Yamashita’s Gold in front of anyone outside Omega.

The two French agents present glanced at each other, concerned. They sensed vital information was being withheld from them. The secretiveness of their guests was doing nothing for their mistrust of their opposites or for their inbred dislike of Americans. The lack of consultation – or even any acknowledgement of their presence – irked them also.

At the same time, inside the car that had followed Kentbridge to DST headquarters, Cho-Wu listened in to the Omega agents' discussion with the aid of a listening device. Naylor’s voice came through loud and clear. “Sebastian knows too much. We either need to reel him in or terminate him, but he must not trade with the Chinese.”

Cho-Wu grew alert as he realized they were after the same American agent he would soon be doing business with. He scribbled furiously on a note pad, writing down the name
Sebastian
as he continued to eavesdrop.

#

Minutes later, Kentbridge, Naylor, Seventeen and the French agents watched a monitor inside the DST meeting room. It screened security camera footage taken of Nine and Isabelle in the mall the day before. Naylor was as baffled as his fellow Omegans as they watched Nine using Isabelle as a hostage. None of them had any idea why such a well-trained operative would be resorting to such desperate tactics.

Naylor suspected Nine had lost his mind and he said as much. Kentbridge knew better. Yes, Nine seemed disturbed, but he also appeared as determined and well-measured as ever. Kentbridge had always known his favorite orphan had been emotionally fragile, but he was also aware it would take a hell of a lot to break his will. It was his assessment Nine was still a long way from breaking point.

The security footage ended with Nine diving on top of Isabelle in the elevator to shield her from the gunfire he feared would come their way. One of the French Intelligence agents switched the monitor off.

“
This girl is like Patty Hearst all over again!” Naylor observed.

The Omega director’s lazy eye was causing the French agents some consternation. They were sure his last comment had been directed at one of his American companions, but he seemed to be looking at them.

Seventeen came to their rescue. “The Alleget woman's bound to throw up another trace for us though, sir.”

Naylor looked at his female operative shrewdly then picked up a photo of Isabelle and studied it.

In the same car outside, Cho-Wu listened intently. Realizing the conversation inside the French Intelligence headquarters was over, he fired instructions at his Chinese driver. The driver immediately started the car.

#

At dusk, the MSS car pulled up
outside the same restaurant Cho-Wu had frequented
every day since arriving in Paris. The agent climbed out of the car and walked toward the restaurant’s entrance where a Chinese chef stood smoking outside. A sign above the chef read:
The Red Dragon Chinese Restaurant
.

“
Ni hao,” the chef greeted him.

“
Wan Shang Hao,” Cho-Wu answered before entering the establishment. Inside, he ordered noodles and asked for his meal to be served in quick time. It was.

Cho-Wu read a Chinese daily newspaper as he noisily devoured the noodles using chopsticks. On the newspaper’s front page was a photo of Isabelle. He recognized her as soon as he saw her. She was the ebony beauty he’d seen on one of the files he’d downloaded at the cyber café. The newspaper article reconfirmed what he’d overheard the US operatives talking about: the American he was scheduled to do business with and Isabelle Alleget’s abductor were one and the same.

Like Nine’s fellow Omegans, Cho-Wu wondered why Nine would jeopardize his mission in such a way.
Why not ditch the woman, or kill her if she’s a liability?

#

In a hotel room just four blocks away, Isabelle struggled as Nine tied her down to a bed using the cords of two hotel dressing gowns. The fugitive agent, who was now disguised as an Arab, showed no emotion as he tied Isabelle’s legs and then her hands to the four bedposts.

Helpless, Isabelle could do nothing. Instead of resisting, which she knew by now was futile anyway, she thought hard for another way to get through to him.

“
You know, as strong as you appear to be, inside you are weak,” she admonished him in French. “I see through your mask of courage and I see a frightened child within.”

Nine, who was now busy unbuttoning his shirt, glanced at her for a second before ripping the black kit off his chest.

“
You’re afraid just like me,” Isabelle continued in her native tongue. “I know your type. You’re a coward who blindly follows orders given by other puppets just like you.”

Nine was only half-listening as he opened up the kit. He pulled out a small roll of brown masking tape.

Isabelle couldn’t believe all the tiny accessories he kept in the kit. “You think I am just a naïve French girl, yet I am the only one who truly sees you for who you are.”

Using a small pair of scissors, Nine cut off a strip of the masking tape. He held the strip in both hands and stared down at Isabelle regretfully. “I’m sorry. You leave me no choice.” He placed the masking tape over her mouth. Unable to speak or move, Isabelle flashed him a look of revulsion. “You think I'm free?” Nine asked. “I'm more of a captive than you are. They've always controlled me.”

He checked to ensure Isabelle was securely fastened to the bed then placed covers over her to ensure she’d be warm. Nine took one last look at her before leaving the room. In the corridor, he locked the door and placed a
Do Not Disturb
sign on the handle.

Nine was almost ready to carry out what he hoped would be the final act in his espionage career. Knowing the authorities were looking for him, and expecting Kentbridge and Seventeen to do everything in their power to prevent him executing his pending deal with the Chinese, he needed to create the ultimate disguise. Something that not even Kentbridge would look twice at. Nine already had an outrageous idea.

24

N
ine stepped out of the hotel in his Arab guise and merged with other pedestrians. Walking with an assumed limp, he crossed the busy road and hailed a taxi.

The taxi driver, who happened to be Middle-Eastern, gave his fare a traditional Arab greeting. “Al salaam a'alaykum,” he smiled, revealing tobacco-stained teeth that had definitely seen better days.

Nine conversed with him in Arabic, referring to the driver as his
Muslim brother
. Mentioning he was from Yemen, Nine asked the driver to take him to any shopping mall that offered late night trading. En route, he was forced to listen to the driver’s life story which began in Iraq, moved on to Turkey and culminated with his migration to France.

By the time the taxi arrived at the mall, Nine regretted he hadn’t said he was Iranian and spoke Farsi instead of Arabic – something he could have just as easily done.

#

Laden down with shopping bags, Nine left the mall shortly before closing time. He found a nearby cyber café. After setting up a new email account, he sent another text message to Lhozang’s cellphone. Short and to the point, it read:
Have your man be under the Eiffel Tower tomorrow at 0830 hours. Send only one man or there will be no trade.

Mindful that Isabelle had been tied for several hours, Nine hurried back to the hotel. He found his hostage wide-awake. She was crying. Her eyes reflected her inner torment.

Feeling guilty, but taking care not to show it, Nine placed his shopping bags on the floor then untied Isabelle and removed the tape from over her mouth. She immediately slapped him as hard as she could. He felt his jaw click slightly out of place. Her power surprised him. Nine didn’t retaliate: he figured he’d deserved it.