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“Quinn, I want to talk to you.”
“We are talking, Zack.”
“I mean face-to-face.”
“Sure, no problem. You say when and where.”
“No tricks, Quinn. Unarmed, no backup.”
“You got it.”
Zack dictated the time and the place. Quinn made no notes—there was no need. He returned to the hotel. He found Sam in the lounge-cum-bar, with croissants and milky coffee before her. She looked up eagerly.
“What did he want?”
“A meeting, face-to-face.”
“Quinn, darling, be careful. He’s a killer. When and where?”
“Not here,” he said. There were other tourists havi
ng a late breakfast. “In our room.”
“It’s a hotel room,” he told her when they were upstairs. “Tomorrow at eight in the morning. His room at the Hôtel Roblin. Reserved in the name of—would you believe it?—Smith.”
“I have to be there, Quinn. I don’t like the sound of it. Don’t forget I’m weapon-trained too. And you are definitely carrying the Smith & Wesson.”
“Sure,” said Quinn.
Several minutes later Sam made an excuse and went down to the bar. She was back after ten minutes. Quinn recalled that there was a phone on the end of the bar.
She was asleep when he left at midnight, the bedside alarm clock set for six in the morning. He moved through the bedroom like a shadow, picking up his shoes, socks, trousers, shorts, sweater, jacket, and gun as he went. There was no one in the corridor. He dressed there, stuck the pistol in his belt, adjusted the windbreaker to cover it, and went silently downstairs.
He found a cab on the Champs-Elysées and was at the Hôtel Roblin ten minutes later.
“La chambre de Monsieur Smith, s’il vous plaît,” he told the night porter. The man checked a list and gave him the key. Number 10. Second floor. He mounted the stairs and let himself in.
The bathroom was the best place for the ambush. The door was in the corner of the bedroom and from it he could cover every angle, especially the door to the corridor. He removed the bulb from the main light in the bedroom, took an upright chair and placed it inside the bathroom. With the bathroom door open just enough to give him a two-inch crack, he began his vigil. When his night-sight came he could clearly make out the empty bedroom, dimly lit by the light from the street coming through the windows, whose curtains he had left open.
By six no one had come; he had heard no footsteps in the corridor. At half past six the night porter brought coffee to an early riser down the corridor; he heard the footsteps passing the door, then returning to the stairs to the lobby. No one came in; no one tried to come in.
At eight he felt the sense of relief washing over him. At twenty past the hour he left, paid his bill, and took a cab back to the Hôtel du Colisée. She was in the bedroom and nearly frantic.
“Quinn, where the hell have you been? I’ve been desperate with worry. I woke at five ... you weren’t there. ... For God’s sake, we’ve missed the rendezvous.”
He could have lied, but he was genuinely remorseful. He told her what he had done. She looked as if he had hit her in the face.
“You thought it was me?” she whispered.
“Yes,” he admitted. After Marchais and Pretorius he had become obsessed with the idea that someone was tipping off the killer or killers; how else could they twice get to the vanished mercenaries before he and Sam did? She swallowed hard, composed herself, hid the hurt inside her.
“Okay, so when is the real rendezvous, may I ask? That is, if you trust me enough now.”
“It’s in an hour, at ten o’clock,” he said. “A bar off the rue de Chalón, right behind the Gare de Lyon. It’s a long haul—let’s go now.”
It was another cab ride. Sam sat silently reproachful as they rode down the quays along the north bank of the Seine from the northwest to the southeast of the city. Quinn dismissed the taxi on the corner of the rue de Chalón and the Passage de Gatbois. He decided to walk the rest.
The rue de Chalón ran parallel to the railway tracks heading out of the station toward the south of France. From beyond the wall they could hear the clang of trains moving over the numerous points outside the terminus. It was a dingy street.
