Читать книгу The Crimson Code - Rachel Lee - Страница 15

Saint-Arnans-la-Bastide, France

General Jules Soult sat in the comfortable leather armchair in his library. He puffed on a cigar and studied the papers that had arrived by pouch from Frau Schmidt only a short while ago. The courier was cooling his heels outside, awaiting Soult’s response.

It would be positive, of course. He had every intention of taking over intelligence operations for the European Union Department of Collective Security. He also intended to make very sure that these documents he was to sign would hamper him in no important way.

He was quite pleased to discover that there was nothing to object to in the papers before him. He was assigned full intelligence responsibility and ordered to report directly to Frau Schmidt herself. Apparently the good German woman had no desire for any dirt to get past the two of them. That pleased him.

His operational budget would be generous, and while his operatives were forbidden to use deadly force except in self-defense, Soult wasn’t worried about that detail. His people would ensure that he retained plausible deniability.

Satisfied, he signed and initialed the first set of documents, keeping a copy for himself, and slipped the executed version back into the pouch. He touched a button on his desk, and moments later his butler appeared. An English butler, of course. There was something about the way the English buttled that remained without compare.

“For the courier. Then I should like my brandy.”

The man bowed, accepting the pouch. “At once, Monsieur le Général.”

Soult sent the butler on his way, then reached into his top right desk drawer and pulled out a remote control. With the touch of a few buttons, the library wall to one side opened and revealed a large-screen television. As always, it was already tuned to a news network. Today he chose to listen to one out of Germany. It always paid to have a wide variety of sources.

What he saw pleased him immensely. Students in Berlin were burning pictures of Osama bin Laden. The Islamic Center in Vienna had suffered from graffiti and broken windows. The violence was still only in the stage of small outbreaks. But it would provide perfect cover for what was to come.

He was still smiling when his butler returned with his Napoleon brandy on a silver salver. The man placed the snifter carefully on Soult’s desk and began to bow out.

“Wait, Devon.”

The butler paused and straightened to attention. “Monsieur?”

“Have you seen the news about the public attacking mosques? And protesting?”

“Yes, sir.”

Soult turned to look the man in the eye. “What do you think of it?”

“I can understand the anger, monsieur, but the actions accomplish nothing of purpose.”

Soult nodded slowly, and dipped the mouth end of his cigar in the brandy for a moment. “What would be your idea of a proper response?”

Devon’s eyes widened only a fraction, and only momentarily, before he resumed his customarily formal demeanor. “I’m quite sure I don’t know, sir. I am merely a butler.”

Soult chuckled. “And a diplomatic one at that. Don’t you feel the least urge to strike back, to seek vengeance, no, justice, for these atrocities?”

Devon hesitated. “What I feel, sir, is not necessarily a wise response. Yes, I feel loathing for persons who could commit such crimes. But does that give me the right to take the law into my own hands?”

With that, before he could be questioned any further, Devon and his salver disappeared from the library.

Soult studied the curl of smoke rising from his cigar, then glanced at the news again. Devon would bear watching, he decided. Then, a moment later, he changed his mind. Devon had spoken as a rational, mature man who had been raised in a culture of law. And everything that he himself was about to do would be under the color of law. And if it were so, then Devon should have no reason to object, not that Soult had any intention of letting his butler in on his secrets. Still, he knew better than to presume that a butler—even one as impeccably trained as Devon—would be oblivious to what happened around him.

Reaching for the phone, he placed a call. When his comrade answered, Soult spoke in flawless Spanish. “I have the position, but I must attend to administrative details before I can issue a contract. However, you may begin your recruiting efforts immediately.”

He hung up and sat back in his chair. Everything was going as it should. Another smile creased his face. Every revolution required an army, and soon he would have his. What’s more, the very government he intended to seize would be paying for that army. The effortless irony of his plans gave him a heady feeling of power, almost a rush. Better than Napoleon brandy and Cuban cigars.

But even as he was feeling smugly content, the news broke away from its coverage of random acts of malice to something far more deadly.

“Today in Vienna,” the reporter said, “special agents of the EU and the United States carried out a joint strike on a terrorist cell believed to have been involved in Black Christmas….”

Soult sat forward quickly, brandy forgotten, and turned up the volume. Pictures of bodies being carried out flashed across the screen, along with exterior shots of a nondescript concrete apartment house of a type that had become common after the war, a type Soult felt was a blight on the beauty of Europe.

Bodies. Nine terrorists killed in a fierce gun battle. And then the face of the American president, Harrison Rice. “This is only the beginning,” the president said. “We will hunt down these terrorists to the last man. In cooperation with our European allies, we will not allow these atrocities to go unavenged. Thank you.”

Soult sat back slowly. For the first time that day, he sensed something at work that was beyond his knowledge. Beyond his control.

Every bit of triumph he had been feeling vanished like a puff of smoke from the end of his cigar.

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Ahmed Ahsami watched the television, absolutely livid. His men had gone in there to take out those terrorists, but the situation had been snatched away. Among the nine “terrorists” whose pictures were now being broadcast to the world was Yawi. His sister’s son.

He slammed his hand down on his desk over and over, grief and anger warring on a scale that was beyond speech, beyond description. At that moment he could have blasted the entire world into oblivion.

Someone was using him. Someone he thought was an ally. Nothing else could possibly explain this. The information had come to him about the location of the terrorists, but it had apparently gone to someone else, as well. How else could Austrian and American commandos have arrived just minutes after the survivors on his team had withdrawn? That could not have happened by coincidence.

His nephew and Isa had been killed, offered up like sacrificial lambs, and were now being labeled as part of the terrorist cell. And the American president was standing smugly before a bank of microphones, his Alabama drawl and artificially confident smile reminiscent of nothing so much as a plantation owner swearing that rebelling slaves would be hunted down.