Highlander - Donna Lettow [6]
“What made you go back to Ramallah?” he prompted. He needed to keep her talking, didn’t want her to get alarmed.
“I needed to discover who I really was. I couldn’t turn my back on my people like my father had.”
“You mean you weren’t cut out to be a Bruce Springsteen song?” he added, glibly, his mind only half on their conversation. It was obvious that whoever the guy was, he’d learned his surveillance technique from old Cold War spy movies. MacLeod was waiting for him to start talking into his sleeve.
When Maral laughed, it reminded him of wind chimes. “I went home to teach. And then I met someone …” MacLeod’s mysterious observer turned to the side to light a cigarette and MacLeod spotted the telltale bulge under his left arm that confirmed this was no Watcher. Maybe the guy was inept, but he was deadly serious.
“Maral,” he interrupted her quickly, “hold that thought. I have to …” He gestured vaguely at the interior of the café. “I’ll be right back.”
“Of course,” she said, and watched him sprint into the restaurant.
MacLeod made a beeline for the kitchen. The maître d’, seating a young couple at a table inside, called out to him with concern—“Monsieur?”—but MacLeod kept moving, pushing past a waiter in the narrow aisle between tables, nearly upsetting a tray of drinks. He startled the kitchen help as he slammed through the swinging doors and stalked into the kitchen.
“Are you lost, Monsieur?” a surprised busboy asked. The sous-chef made a move to stop him, but MacLeod was out the back door and into the alley beyond before anyone could reach him.
Slowly, cautiously, MacLeod crept along the side of the restaurant. He spotted his man leaning against a letterbox, smoking with studied casualness. The gunman watched with great interest as the Chez Nous waiter brought their lunch to their table on the patio. MacLeod slipped into the crowd of pedestrians on the sidewalk and, pulling from his pocket the notecard on which he’d jotted the restaurant’s address, strode toward the letterbox as if he was going to mail it.
In front of the letterbox, he made a great show of dropping the card. Recognition dawned on the face of the gunman as MacLeod bent down to pick it up. Before the gunman could react, MacLeod elbowed him sharply in the groin.
The man bent double in pain, howling. MacLeod delivered a roundhouse kick squarely in the man’s gut, driving him hard back against the letterbox.
A well-placed hit to the back of the man’s neck dropped him neatly to the pavement before the passersby on the sidewalk were even aware anything had happened.
MacLeod had the man’s gun almost before the gunman hit the ground. A passing tourist screamed at the sight of the automatic, alerting everyone on the street and in the café as well, but MacLeod had eyes only for the battered gunman at his feet.
“Who are you?” MacLeod growled, pressing the automatic nearer the man’s face. “Why were you spying on me?” He tried again, in Arabic this time. “Shú ismak? Min wáyn inta?” but still there was no response. The man simply closed his eyes, as if expecting MacLeod to pull the trigger.
Suddenly, MacLeod felt a hard ring of steel jammed in his own side, insistent. “Donn-can,” Maral’s purr pleaded in his ear, “put the gun down. Please, put the gun down.” He could feel her hands shaking, felt her gun vibrate against his ribs. For the safety of all of them, he decided to do as she said. He set the automatic on the pavement by the letterbox.
The man on the ground made a quick move toward it, intent on using it. Maral barked a sharp “la!”, no, and reached out her hand to help him gingerly to his feet. “Assad, Duncan MacLeod,” she said to him by way of perfunctory introduction as she helped him up. Assad, in pain, held his ribs and glowered at MacLeod. To MacLeod she said, “Duncan, this is Assad. My bodyguard.”
“Your WHAT?” MacLeod was livid.
Maral, hearing the distinctive whine of Parisian police cars