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“I could not do it personally,” he says. “Hugo was my friend.”
After a brief walk to enjoy the spring air of Paris, he takes a taxi to one of his favorite places in the City of Lights. Within half an hour of his wonderful lunch with Marcel, he is standing on the banks of the Seine, looking across the muddy water at the Île de la Cité and its most famous building, the 800-year-old Notre Dame Cathedral with its twin spires, flying buttresses, and intricate carvings and sculptures. The reconstruction work from the blaze years ago continues, with its completion date continuously being pushed back.
Still, it is a thing of beauty, of history—a monument to a Christian empire.
He shifts the paper bag holding his recently purchased items from one hand to the other, recalling his many visits to Istanbul and its most famous religious building, the Hagia Sophia, which once upon a time was a cathedral like this one, named the Shrine of the Holy Wisdom of God.
Once upon a time.
Then the blessed day of May 29 came, and the shrine was destroyed and converted into a mosque.
Like this beautiful building across the way.
It, too, will eventually be a mosque.
And that other cathedral in New York City, the one called St. Patrick’s—that too will be converted.
Once the bodies littering the streets have been removed.
Chapter34
THE LUXURIOUSTotal SA jet banks in its final approach, and I’m looking over the rear of the couch through its small windows. Below us is a French Air Force airfield, Orléans-Bricy Air Base, about eighty miles south of Paris. I see the familiar shapes of military jets and four-engine transport planes resting on paved runways, along with hangars and a control tower, and part of me thinks,Well, one more air base on the visited list.But I’m seething inside.
Plus a bit scared, which I hate to admit.
Smoked.
And for what reason?
I’ll probably never know.
All I do know is that I’ve been kicked out, abandoned, torn from the flock. In my previous career and missions, no matter how lost I was (like being in a Georgia swamp at night during my Ranger training) or how overwhelmed and frightened I was (like being in a dirt shelter in a remote FOB in Afghanistan while mortar shells thundered into the compound), there was always a deep faith and knowledge that I wasn’t alone. That friends and allies were merely a walk away, or a radio call away, or a text away.
Not now.
Having been sheep-dipped earlier, I have no official ID, no credit cards, no cash—not even a Lincoln penny. All I have are the clothes on my back, a 9mm SIG Sauer pistol with two spare magazines, and the photo of my Tom and Denise.
Which means for the foreseeable future, I’ll need to rely for my very existence—food, shelter, protection—on the compact man with the trimmed beard sitting across from me, calmly reading a day-old copy of theDaily Starnewspaper from Beirut.
Me depending on a man for my life?
I won’t let that last.
I’m still in charge of this op.
We land and quickly taxi to a far end of the air base, at an apron that has two black sedans waiting for us, along with a set of mobile stairs. When the Total SA jet finally and softly comes to a halt, Jean-Paul bustles forward and expertly unfastens the side door.
He snaps off a quick and happy civilian salute to Jeremy and me, and I descend the stairway next to Jeremy. There’s a greeting committee of one man standing at the bottom of the stairs; four others in sunglasses and dark suits stand at a bit of a distance.
“Why here and not Vélizy-Villacoublay?” I ask. “You said you were going to Paris. That’s the closest military base to Paris.”
Jeremy smiles at the man waiting for us, gives him a quick wave. “Because Vélizy-Villacoublay is where the French Air Force keeps its government aircraft, including their version of Air Force One. We don’t need the extra eyes.”
We step onto the pavement and it seems to be in the eighties—warm for Paris in May. Once our feet hit the ground, we nearly get struck by the mobile stairway being backed away, and then the engines on the Total SA aircraft whine up in power as it starts to manuever toward the nearest runway.
We get closer to our apparent hosts, and Jeremy calls out, “Hey, Victor! Grand to see you!”
The sound of the jet engines drops off and a thick, heavyset man approaches us, all smiles. He has on a light gray two-piece suit, dark shoes, and a white shirt with some French regimental necktie flapping in the wind. He has a thick neck, a nose that looks like it’s been broken and rearranged a couple of times, and jet-black eyebrows. His hair has been shaved down to stubble and he smiles as he comes to Jeremy, then has a flash of concern in his eyes when he spots me.
