CHAPTER 1

The grip of the SIG Sauer P226 pistol in his coat pocket reassuredCaleb Frost. He stepped off the Métro car as the doors swooshedopen. Heavier and taller at six foot four and 205 pounds than theaverage Parisian, he made his way easily through the crowd waiting toboard. Warm, body-odor-laced air from the packed Métro car collidedwith the cold, damp-clothing smell of the impatient, homeward-boundcrowd. Out of habit, Caleb slipped his hand more deeply intohis pocket, feeling for the security of the SIG Sauer's textured grip.

Women glanced at him, appreciative of his youthful appearance,his longish blond hair, and his open-faced honesty. Without question,women found him attractive. At thirty-two, he still looked as if hewere in his twenties. His look of innocence served him well in theworld in which he had to survive. The images resident deep within hispale-gray eyes told another story. They had witnessed and recordedscenes and events most people would not be able to assimilate andthen continue with their normal lives. His resilience to the onslaughtof life's ugly realities left him a tortured force within a deceptivelybenign exterior.

Caleb Frost was a professional—a professional assassin. He wason the payroll of the US government, and he was an expert in blackand very wet operations.

Pausing, he scanned the crowd exiting the cars and spilling ontothe platform behind him. He didn't expect to see anyone followinghim, but evasion lessons, drilled into him during long days of training,had become second nature. This was his sixth change of Métro linesover the past two hours.

When he was a child, his father had made a game out ofshadowing. If he could follow his father to the local ice-cream storewithout being seen, the prize was chocolate with sprinkles in a sugarcone. Sometimes, the roles were reversed. And sometimes, his motherplayed the game. By the time he was twelve, his techniques for bothevasion and shadowing were equal to his parents' skills. Or so theysaid. And, as he came to learn a couple of years later, they wereprofessionals.

He emerged from the depths of the Métro onto Boulevard SaintGermain in the Sixth Arrondissement. A freezing January rainpounded Caleb's leather coat. He strode past a café and inhaled theharsh odor of Gauloise and Gitanes cigarette smoke. It melded withthe more subtle smell of espresso and perhaps the fragrance of agrilled croque-monsieur sandwich dripping cheese. The windowsof the café and the small shops along the street were etched bycondensation, blurring his view of the people inside. Hand-clearedpeepholes wiped by comfortably seated patrons allowed them to lookoutside. The blurry apertures permitted him to see threads of steamfloating from wet shoulders and heads. Customers fondled theirsmall cups of espresso. He envied the lucky souls who had escapedthe biting wind and angled spears of rain stabbing the city; theygathered the café's cloaking warmth around them. In Paris, the coldclimbed inside bodies, chilling them to the core; it slicked the skinwith moisture, dampening clothes and souls.

A maze of small streets and passages leading toward the Seinebranched off Rue Bonaparte. He followed them until he arrived onBoulevard Dauphine, at the end of which he could see the Pont Neufgracefully spanning the river. Each ornate light along the bridge washaloed by the fog rising from the gray water.

He stepped into the Hotel d'Aubusson's elegant lobby and took aseat that allowed him to see through the front window into the street,while keeping an eye on the revolving door at the hotel's entrance.

His SIG Sauer was a pleasant weight on his thigh. Upon his arrivalin Paris, he had picked up the weapon in a back-alley porn shop runby an American operative of one of the alphabet-soup agencies. TheP226 had a double-stack magazine holding fifteen nine-millimeterParabellum rounds—sixteen slugs, if there was one in the chamber, asthere was tonight. Among handguns, it was Caleb's favorite. He foundthat his accuracy with this gun was exceptional, even at distances ofas much as fifty yards. While the P226 would win no beauty contestswith its dull, dark-gray, flat finish, there were few guns as functionalor reliable in its class. Caleb was going to do some work with it thatnight.

Turning his coat collar up against the rain, he left the hotel'scomfort, assured that no one was following him. Only one man knewwhere he was going to be tonight—at least that was how the script waswritten. But one never knew.

He took a left down Rue St. Andre d'Arts, a dark and narrow street.These buildings had been overlooked during the facade-cleaningprogram, which had turned the edifices along the major boulevardsand rues of Paris a glistening white. Above his head, on a metalbracket attached over a door, was a bravely flickering, red neon signthat simply announced, "Hotel." A number of à louer signs hung infilthy windows. Signs announcing studios and galleries for rent werefrequently so faded and aged that it was unlikely that whatever hadbeen available at the time of posting the ad was still for rent. At theend of the street was a plaza with the mandatory café. Inside, studentshuddled around small tables or stood at the zinc bar engaged inintense "save-the-world" and "condemn-the-American-involvement-in-the-Middle-East"conversations. He suspected that the abusedcountry was now Afghanistan or, perhaps, Yemen. Caleb had spent ayear as a student in Paris, and although the times and issues changed,he found that the Franco-American love-hate relationship continuedunabated.

He stepped into the shadowed doorway of an elegant apartmentbuilding and waited five minutes. He was on time for hisrendezvous with the informant. His father had always insisted thatif something was worth doing, then preparation and anticipationof eventualities—if it can go wrong, it may well go wrong—werecritical to the success of the venture. "Visualize the conclusion," hewould say, "and keep that objective in mind." Being early was anadvantage as well.

Across the Seine, at the tip of the Île de la Cité, an oppressiveceiling of dark-gray clouds, their underbellies illuminated by thecity lights, rolled above the towers of La Cathédrale de Notre-Dame.The blunt towers of the cathedral stood as pillars, shouldering theheavy skies above them. In the distance, he could see the Préfecturede Police and L'Hotel Dieu, the center of administration and securityfor the city of Paris. A large plaza separated the government officebuildings and La Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris. The substantialexpanse between these buildings belied the close proximity of themutual interests of the Church and the State.

Caleb walked down Rue Cloitre Notre Dame to the Pont SaintLouis, a bridge connecting the larger Île de la Cité to the smaller,but incredibly more affluent Île St. Louis. Many of the buildingshoused families whose heritage spanned a couple of centuries onthe small island in the middle of the Seine. The old money, thecorps diplomatique, whose political service or family connectionshad earned them postings to Paris, or the seriously nouveau richebusinessmen found that the Île St. Louis address enhanced theirpositions. Five-story buildings crowded along the streets nestled up tothin sidewalks. Tall, narrow rows of windows observed the streets andriver traffic below with a...