Foreign Influence_ A Thriller - Brad Thor [58]
“May I help you?” asked the restaurant’s owner in a haughty tone.
“Do you serve couscous?” Ressam asked.
The owner dropped his voice, grabbed Ressam by the arm, and guided him off the curb and into the street. “Does this look like a fucking couscous restaurant to you, asshole? Go find someplace else to pick pockets. Get lost.”
The owner turned back to his guests and smiled. “No problem, no problem,” he said with a laugh. “Gypsies. Very bad.”
Ressam kept his temper in check and walked to the end of the block. Turning the corner, he stepped into a doorway, lit a cigarette, and watched the final seconds tick down on his watch.
The explosion was deafening. From his vantage point, he saw a cloud of smoke belched from the end of the street and watched as debris from his primary device rained down from above. As soon as the ringing in his ears started to abate, he could hear the sound of people screaming.
Leaving the security of the doorway, he walked back around the corner. His handler had been very specific about this part. He was so very close now. He needed to fight his urge to rush right in. Let it happen, he had been told. Be patient. It was much easier said than done.
Ressam was certain that at any moment someone would point him out and yell, “That’s him! He’s the one who placed the bag at the Greek restaurant.”
It was a foolish fear. Nobody was looking at him at all. Everyone was rushing to the scene of the blast. All of the other restaurants were emptying out as people ran to see what had happened. They were like moths, drawn to the flame. In the distance, he could already hear sirens.
As he neared the restaurant, he could see the carnage firsthand. Tables were overturned, windows were blown out, bodies were everywhere. And there was blood. Oh, so much blood! Blood that had been shed for Allah and all of the world’s Muslims. God was indeed great. So great indeed. Allahuakbar, he thought. Allahuakbar.
And then he began saying it. Quietly at first, but raising his voice as he moved closer to the crowd that now numbered at least two hundred people.
“Allahuakbar!” he yelled at the top of his lungs.
People heard the Islamic war cry and screamed, but it was too late. Samir Ressam took his finger off the detonator and completed his masterpiece.
CHAPTER 26
Harvath had wanted to put as much distance between himself and Cannes as possible. Despite playing dumb with the man’s wife, he knew who Nikolai Nekrasov was. Considering all of his ties to organized crime, it didn’t surprise him one bit that he had a lowlife like Gaston Leveque working for him.
At the Palais des Festivals, Harvath had pulled into the underground parking garage where he had earlier left his Citroën. After having wiped his prints from the Saleen, he had grabbed his pack, turned over the keys, and had said good-bye to Eva Nekrasova.
At the ticket booth, she had blown him a kiss and had roared away toward the center of town. Harvath had let two cars pull out after her and had then exited the structure. Looking up, he had seen no sign of Nekrasov’s helicopter and so had pointed his Citroën toward Marseille.
He made the drive in under two hours and took a room at the Sofitel near the Vieux Port. The valets seemed distracted as did the front desk staff when he checked in.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“There has been a series of suicide bombings in Paris,” the clerk replied.
The minute he got into his room, he turned on the TV. There had been bombings at major tourist attractions across the city. Footage was being played of the devastation at the Eiffel Tower, along the Champs Élysées, at Montmartre, and near Notre Dame. The facts were still sketchy, but there was talk of primary and secondary detonations. It was a favorite tactic of Islamic