Court made a judgment quickly, using all the evidence before him. Those two cops were dirty. Working for the interests of Ahmed or Shakira Azzam, was his best guess.

He told himself he could not stand here across the street while the Halabys were detained or assassinated by Azzam’s proxies. He had to stop them, and to do this he’d need to get past the bike cops. He could take another route into the building, but that would take time. He’d gained access via the roof of an adjoining building earlier in the day, and there were second-floor windows that he could possibly scale up to, but whatever the hell was going on over there was going on right now. And if they were planning on bundling the Halabys up to take them to a secondary location, then at least six armed men would be out in the street at the same time when the couple came out the door. For all Court knew, a paddy wagon was en route, or another dozen motorcycle cops would be here any minute.

Court wasn’t going to shoot it out with French cops, most of whom would be completely innocent.

Shit, shit, shit! Court thought. He looked up and down the street, trying to decide what to do.

Part of him wished he’d just kept walking five minutes earlier, but part of him knew this was exactly why he had come back to check on the situation. If the Halabys had one shot in hell, that shot was the Gray Man.

He blew out a long sigh, looked up and down the narrow winding street, and realized he was probably about to beat the shit out of four innocent policemen who hadn’t done anything wrong.

CHAPTER 16

The gentle knock on the door of the Halabys’ apartment came as Mustafa was dealing with the whistling teakettle in the kitchen, so only Rima heard it at first. She was alone in the living room, with Tarek back in the master bedroom, changing out of the clothes he’d been wearing for the last thirty hours. When she heard the rapping she immediately thought of her upstairs neighbor, Mrs. Rousseau, who often called unannounced. Perhaps she’d heard the talking and had come to see if she could pick up any gossip as to the identity of the Halabys’ English-speaking visitor.

Rima went to the door and looked through the peephole, and was surprised to see a police badge being held up by a clean-shaven man in his thirties. Behind him, a bald man had a badge of his own, hanging from a lanyard around his neck.

The man closest to the door clearly saw someone looking through the hole, because he said, “Monsieur and Madame Doctors Halaby, I am Lieutenant Michael Allard of the PJ. I have Intern Lieutenant Anton Foss with me. Open the door so we can speak for a moment, s’il vous pla?t.”

Rima knew the Police Judiciaire were local criminal investigators. She also knew this was not good, but she saw no way to avoid a conversation. She turned to the kitchen and whispered to Mustafa, telling him to hide the pistol he kept inside his jacket, but she had no idea if he heard her. Unsure, she left the chain on the door but unlocked it. The idea was to talk to the men, to make some noise doing so, and to buy some time.

“Bonjour, monsieur, how can I help you?”

Lieutenant Allard smiled. “Comme ?a.” Like this. Without hesitation he brought his leg up and kicked hard against the door, breaking the chain and knocking Rima back two meters into the entryway.

The second man rushed past the first; Rima saw a black gun with a long silencer in his hand, and as they moved into the living room, the bald man shouldered into Rima as he passed, knocking her back several meters more.

Lieutenant Allard kicked the door shut as he entered, then raced across the entryway, took a stunned Rima by the arm, and pulled her deeper into the apartment.

Mustafa spun into the living room from the kitchen with his pistol just coming out of his jacket, a look of alarm on his face. The bald Parisian police officer was only three steps away, and he was raising his own weapon. Both men were committed to action; their proximity and mutual surprise meant there was no opportunity for de-escalation. Foss fired before his silencer was level with the Syrian’s chest, hitting the Syrian in the shin and causing him to jerk his body in reaction to the pain and noise. A second loud snap came from the cop’s gun as a round hit Mustafa in the stomach, and a third caught him in the top of the head as he fell forward, face-first onto the floor.

Expended cartridges from Foss’s SIG bounced around the room. Blood drained freely from the dead man’s skull, creating a halo in red on the brown tile flooring.

Lieutenant Allard pushed Rima hard, deeper into the living room, shoving her onto the sofa she’d been sitting on minutes earlier while talking to the American. Allard’s own gun was out, but it wasn’t pointed at Rima. Instead it was pointed at the hallway leading to the rest of the apartment.

Dr. Tarek Halaby raced out of the hall, straight into the line of fire. He wore his undershirt and his suit pants, and he pulled up immediately, raised his empty hands, and stood there, looking down to his wife, who lay on the sofa on Tarek’s right.

“Non!” he shouted. “Don’t hurt her! We’ll give you whatever you want!”

Lieutenant Allard lowered his weapon, then twitched it towards Rima, motioning for Tarek to join his wife. The second police officer stepped over to Mustafa, picked up his gun, and slipped it into the small of his back.

Allard now pointed with his free hand to the dead body in the kitchen doorway with the halo of blood around the head. “That man, I am sure we will find, had no license to carry a firearm in France. We had no alternative but to shoot him.”

Tarek and Rima just stared back at him. Tarek asked, “What do you want?”

Allard pulled a chair out of the seating area, spun it around, and sat down on it backwards. “We want Bianca Medina, and before you tell me that you don’t know who or what I am talking about, you need to understand one thing. We arrested Ali Safra, your underling at the Free Syria Exile Union. He informed us about his surveillance of Bianca. We also have video of her being led away from her hotel last night by a man, obviously hired by you. You have broken dozens of French laws in your kidnapping operation, and you both could spend the rest of your lives in prison for your actions, but we would be willing to work with you on the charges if you tell us where Medina is being held.”

Tarek said, “Only two of you? You think we have kidnapped a woman at gunpoint, killed five bodyguards and at least as many terrorists, and you and your colleague here are the only ones to come to look into the matter? Do you take us for fools?”

Rima’s voice cracked when she spoke. “You are not policemen. You are agents of Ahmed Azzam.”

The Frenchman made a face of disgust at the name. “I assure you my badge is legitimate. I am merely here making an inquiry.”

Allard pulled his badge lanyard from around his neck and tossed it to Tarek, now sitting on the couch next to his wife. “Trust me, monsieur. I have more officers at the front door, and several more holding a perimeter around the neighborhood. And inspect my badge, if you must. Ask yourself . . . if I were not a real policeman, why would I keep up the ruse? Why wouldn’t I just shoot you in the knee, or your wife in the forehead, and force you to give me information?”

Tarek looked at the badge, then up at the man standing over him and his wife. The second man was closer to the kitchen, his pistol low in his hand. “I know people at PJ. Let me contact them, see if you are who you say you are.”

Allard chuckled. “You are in no position to make counterdemands.”

“Then we will say nothing until you take us to the Thirty-Six,” Tarek said. The massive headquarters of the PJ was at the famous address of 36 Quai des Orfèvres, and Parisians referred to the building simply as “the 36.”

Allard shrugged. “We could go to the station . . . but time is of the essence. The life of the Spanish national who was taken last evening is all we care about.”

Tarek repeated himself. “We will say nothing until we are at the station.”

The Frenchman did not move a muscle for nearly ten seconds. Then he slowly smiled and shook his head. “Non. I think we will do this right here.”

He pulled out his phone, dialed a number, and actuated the speaker function.

* * *

? ? ?

Court stepped out of the grocery store and walked purposefully across the street and directly towards the four police officers. The door to the Halabys’ apartment building had been propped open with a planter by one of the policemen, and Court hoped like hell the four men standing there would let him enter unchecked.

But he had no such luck. As soon as it became apparent where he was going, one of the men spoke to him in French, asking if he lived in the building.

Court stopped ten feet from the door, in front of the four officers. “Sorry, do you speak English?”

One of the other police officers took over. “Do you live here?”

“Yes . . . what’s going on?”