The Natanz Directive Read Free Page B

was cool and moist; it was going to be a typical spring day in Paris. I discerned a pattern among the people streaming in and out of the airport: hurried and self-absorbed; typical airport behavior. I was on the hunt for that one anomaly. That one person whose glance lingered a blink too long, that one airport employee who seemed a step out of place, that one face with a sheen of anxiety.
    I stopped and observed the line of taxis waiting for fares. Most of the drivers looked Arab. I spotted a tall, light-skinned man with exceptionally pronounced cheekbones—he looked Ethiopian or Somali, but I knew different—standing against a less-than-pristine sedan third in the queue. He watched the swarm of arriving passengers with the laconic eyes of a veteran while I watched him. He was a veteran all right, but not of the taxi-driving kind.
    When I was sure I was the only person taking an interest in him, I dragged my carry-on his way. This didn’t make me particularly popular with the cabbies at the head of the line, but that was not my problem.
    He turned my way. He smiled and his eyes flicked in recognition. I studied them, plumbing them in an instant for any sign of trouble. His name was Hammid Zoghby; he was an Algerian operative and an old friend. But in the shadowy world of black ops, alliances can turn in a moment, and old didn’t necessarily mean trusted.
    He stuck out a large paw. “Monsieur Green! Bienvenue à Paris, ” he said.
    Charles Green was one of three aliases I had invented for this mission. As far as the world knew, a guy named Jake Conlan was having dinner in his Annapolis home and sipping a nice chardonnay.
    Zoghby threw my carry-on into the trunk and offered me the rear seat of the taxi. There was a blue gym bag with an Adidas logo on the floor, just as I had instructed.
    He pulled away from the curb and traded some choice Arabic with the cabbies at the head of the line. Then he laughed, as if screwing a couple of Iraqis was about as much fun as an African could have. He glanced at me in the rearview mirror and in English said, “Where to?”
    All Zoghby knew was that he was to pick me up at the airport with a blue gym bag in tow. “Head for the city and take your time.” At this time in the morning, we would have the road more or less to ourselves, and I was in no hurry. My rendezvous wasn’t until midmorning.
    â€œYou got it, boss.” Zoghby kept a close eye on his rearview mirror as we made our way out of the airport and gave me a quick nod as we merged onto the highway. “Looking good,” he said. He sat back and turned on the radio.
    I set the gym bag next to me and zipped it open. Hidden underneath a layer of folded towels was a Mauser 7.65 mm pistol—not my gun of choice, but acceptable for the work I had to do here in Paris—and an aluminum tube: a silencer. I checked the magazine. Another two magazines were tucked inside a black nylon pouch. I slid the pistol inside my waistband and the spare magazines and silencer into the pockets of my suit coat.
    There were also two Cartier jewelry boxes inside the gym bag, and I set them on the seat next to me. I discarded the lids, pushed aside the interior cotton, and removed two stainless steel memorial bracelets with the names of two former comrades laser-cut into the bands. Paul Redder and Clayton Spriggs were operatives killed in Afghanistan four years ago. Good friends. Superpatriots. And, yes, the bracelets memorialized their sacrifices, but they weren’t the work of Cartier or any other jeweler. They were hand-tooled by an explosives expert in Marseilles named Fabian Tomas. I’d known Tomas for twenty-three years, and there wasn’t anything he couldn’t turn into a weapon.
    These particular bracelets were coated with a minute amount of Semtex, a relatively stable explosive until it came in contract with a spark detonator. In other words, I wouldn’t want to rub the two