Blue with Black Dots (The Caprice Trilogy Book 2) (32 page)

As the train worked against its own weight to build momentum, Georgia thought of herself.  She was in the same way as the train, pulling weight.  If the assassin had gotten to Hagan, before he had a chance to meet her, then she was the last card on the table.  The idea was heavy.  Without talking to the Director, she understood she wasn’t just responsible for investigating Patrick’s death.  She would have to stand for the rest of the Peers, find out what was happening to all of them.  It was more than she was trained to handle.  But it had to be handled.  And she couldn’t do it on her own.  Operating out of a hotel room or temporary shelter wasn’t good enough.  She had to go back to Paris.  There was no other place for her to be at that point.  But she didn’t ride back to Paris alone.  The characters rode with her. 
The KGB assassin.
 
Hagan
. 
An unknown killer.
  They were all taking turns at the forefront in her mind.  The trip back to Paris took less time than the trip to Le Harve.  She couldn’t decide on a scenario.  The scenarios seemed unlikely the more she tried to settle on one.

•••

Paris looked bigger than when she left it.  Gare Saint-Lazare was a monument.   She never took time to truly see it.  But now she was seeing it.  The design of the building said it was Parisian and it was public.  All public buildings in Paris had the similar handsome-faced façade.  It looked like a transplanted piece of La Conciergerie, the large city palace four kilometers away.   La Conciergerie had been the Capitol of the Reign of Terror in Paris.   Like many public buildings, La Conciergerie was mixed-use.  It had been used as a palace and banquet hall for Frankish monarchs.  It also had its own prison, dungeons and death row—waiting rooms for the Guillotine.  Marie-Antoinette was imprisoned in La Conciergerie, writing and waiting to be beheaded.  Georgia knew the history.  Her mother made sure of that.  Although British, Georgia’s mother had French roots.  The family rumor mill held them as French aristocracy who fled to Britain before the onset of the Revolution.  Her mother had always said history, especially family history, was everywhere and in everything.  Georgia felt a wild-minded sympathy for Marie-Antoinette.  She also felt trapped in a cell waiting to be executed.  The world seemed incomprehensibly big when ready to be left behind.  The city wasn’t even twenty-four hours older but had a disproportionate growth spurt.  A business as simple as a shoe shop seemed vast and complicated.  The feeling wasn’t that of being overwhelmed.  It felt more like being outnumbered.  There were too many moving parts.  The movement of people and cars combined with the movement in her mind.  There was too much motion for her to settle herself.  She took a taxi back to her second floor apartment on Rue Monsieur-le-Prince. 

It was quiet when she walked in.  Although she lived alone, she expected noise.  It was part of the movement she felt from one ear to the other.  The thought crossed her mind to take her
Browning
from her purse and canvas her apartment.  Her instinct told her she was alone.  But the apartment was 140 square meters.  She had to check it.  It wouldn’t take long and it was more necessary than not, the Peers were going extinct.  She cased the main area and the kitchen in one swoop.  She walked toward the bedroom with her heels ringing across the tile flooring.  Her
Browning
wasn’t held straight out in front of her.  It would make it easier for her to be disarmed by a surprise intruder.  She had her gun nestled against her hip in her right hand, muzzle pointed forward.  Her right finger was positioned to squeeze the trigger when necessary.  Her left arm was folded across her waist on top of the gun casing to steady her aim.  Her positioning was similar to a gun duel in the Old West.  Instead of taking ten paces away from her intended target, she was slowly stepping toward it.  Her left arm was strung across her body in case of a close assault.  She could push off her attacker with her left arm to create separation.  And her left hand, having just been on top of her gun, would know exactly where the muzzle of the gun was pointed—where the bullet would fly.  It was different than the way law enforcement agents entered a potential hot zone.  Police officers brandished their guns as a warning.  CIA agents wanted to proceed as if not armed at all.  In the spy game, a dead agent told more tales than a live one, on occasion.  A dead agent meant his cover was blown.  It also meant he was getting close to something.  Most importantly, it meant he hadn’t been turned.  The Agency didn’t train their agents to shoot first and ask questions later.  They just shot.  The Agency had other ways to get answers to questions, besides asking.  After clearing the apartment, Georgia had many questions answered.

Georgia stayed in her apartment for more than 24-hours.  She didn’t eat much and she was suffering from mental exhaustion.  She had to run scenarios in her mind.  But she didn’t settle on anything, which made running scenarios pointless.  And she still hadn’t been summoned to briefing.  She spent much of the next day in bed.  She was on high alert without knowing what the alert was for.  Her heart rate was accelerated, even though she did next to no physical activity.  She had to take her mind down.  And she still needed to take her mind off the idea of being a target.  She thought the best way to get her mind off of it was to do something she didn’t really like to do, watch TV.  She spent her afternoon watching French daytime TV.  There were a lot of 60’s French films that played during the day.  They were interesting in the sense that it was as far away from her reality as she could get without leaving Paris altogether.  If she understood French humor she would have had a complete reversal of mood.  But some meaning was lost in translation.  At 5:00pm, she had a plot with a twist.  It wasn’t a film.  It was the news.  She was frustrated with the fact that she couldn’t listen to the news a second time.  She was fluent in French, but she spent the past few months in the UK.  She hadn’t had a French conversation, since Harvey Point.  The message translation wasn’t that hard.  
Man
. 
Shot
. 
Three times.
 
Le Harve
. 
In hospital
. 
Paris
.  She switched channels hoping she could get more details.  The report was on multiple channels but the details were mostly the same.  Georgia realized she had more details than the reporters were broadcasting.  She knew the identity of the man.  It was Hagan.  Georgia ran to her bedroom and to her rucksack.  She found her
SX-70
camera and quickly loaded a new film cartridge.  She ran back to the living room and aimed the camera at the television set in the bottom left corner.  She took a picture of the TV station logo from the screen.  She waited for the picture of the logo to materialize and left in on the kitchen table.  She continued listening to the report and remembered the name of the hospital before she went to the bedroom changed into her blue blouse and went to the bathroom.  She took four pictures of herself against the white wall.  From the bathroom to the kitchen, Georgia started searching the drawers of the apartment for the tools she needed:  Aluminum foil, colored permanent markers, a craft knife, permanent glue and plastic wrap.  She only had plastic wrap.  She had to go to a crafts store six blocks away to get the rest.  She also bought a label maker and paper cards.

It was 6:15pm when she got back to her apartment.  She wasn’t sure but she was thought the hospital would close to outside personnel around 8:00pm.  She made a stencil of the TV station logo from the photograph and put it over the aluminum foil.  She used the markers to color the foil, matching the logo colors as best she could.  She took the craft knife and cut out the foil logo and glued it to the bottom of a paper card.  She cut out her best photo of the four she had taken into a square headshot and glued it to the middle of the card.  She printed two labels: 
Louise Caron
and
Journaliste
.  She labelled herself as journalist, Louise Caron and cut off the edges to make the card look like a typical ID.  Laminate wasn’t available in French stores and had to be specially ordered.  She had to use pastic wrap and an iron.  She ironed over the plastic wrap two times cold and one time hot. 

The ID looked good, considering the manufacturing process was under an hour.   Georgia went to her bedroom and swapped her blue blouse for a green one.  She matched the blouse with a dark navy skirt and wore the same faux-leather boots that had been delivered in the suitcase from Gare du Nord, the ones that hid her
Browning
.  She threw a navy jacket on over her blouse and fastened her ID to the outside of her jacket.  She buttoned her blouse to the top and buttoned her jacket.  The conservative look would get her less attention.  Georgia arrived at the hospital at 7:38pm.  There were policemen and reporters.  Some reporters were inside and some were outside.  Georgia looked at the number of policemen and thought she would have done better disguised as one of them.  She followed a group of reporters who were rushed inside.  She rushed with them.  The two policemen, leading the pack of reporters, didn’t so much check ID badges as they checked to see if each person had one.  Georgia took her
SX-70
camera out of her coat pocket and unfolded it.  It wasn’t a traditional camera for a reporter but nothing was really traditional for field journalism.  It was a process.  She had an ID, else didn’t matter.  She had a camera, else didn’t matter.  The journalists were given an audience with a high-ranking police Sargeant and a doctor.  Georgia took a picture of both in case she was being watched.  She had a pen and stack of paper cards.  She took legitimate notes of what was said in French.  If anyone wanted to see her notes, they wouldn’t arouse any suspicion.  Georgia stood with the other reporters for nearly fifteen minutes, when the police official opened for questions.  Georgia turned to the officer standing against the wall and asked a single-worded question,
 Les toilettes?
  The officer pointed down the hall and around the corner.  Georgia found the ladies’ room and found what she was looking for, a stall to herself at the end of the row. She wrote a note,
hors service
, on a paper card and attached it to the the door with glue.  She wanted to make it look like the janitor had written the note in quick fashion after discovering the toilet wasn’t working.  She put the seat cover down and sat on top of the toilet with her legs folded up.  She couldn’t be seen from the side or from below so she waited. 

People came in and out of the restroom but most of the police outside were men, they would have to go to the men’s room.  She waited for several hours until visiting hours were over and most reporters were gone.  It was 11:00pm on Georgia’s watch and the restroom was empty.  She walked out of the restroom at 11:03pm and went straight down the hall toward the stairs.  She took off her ID badge and walked upstairs from the ground floor to the first floor.  When she got to the first floor she was stung.  It was empty, no police.  Georgia thought at least one officer would be waiting to protect the floor from the press.  But there were none.  Georgia went back to the stairs and went up to the second floor.  The second floor looked more mundane than the first.  The shooting was all over the news but aside from the ground floor, there was next to no notoriety.  Georgia thought there should have been some police guard because the second floor was intensive care.  And the circumstance would required someone to keep order, especially in the intensive care unit.  It was odd because a shooting in France wasn’t as common as a shooting in the US.  The average French citizen couldn’t get access to a gun in France.  Georgia’s
Browning
was hidden back at her apartment.  Getting caught with it wouldn’t just bring charges, it would raise questions.  Georgia started down the hall, trying to find the room with Hagan.  She peered into room after room, finding mostly seniors watching TV or sleeping with it on.  She looked at the names on doors and didn’t see Hagan’s name.  If he was operating under a cover name she had no idea what it would be.  She went to the far wing of the hospital looking into an empty hospital room.   She stared at the hospital room trying to think of how she could find Hagan in such a large hospital.  She decided to leave.  She knew the Director had more resources than she had but she hadn’t spoken to him in days.  And she still hadn’t been briefed.  She figured it was time to talk, whether he was ready for her or not.  The Director could find out where Hagan was, quicker and easier than she could.  Running around the hospital looking in different rooms was inefficient and borderline unprofessional.  Georgia felt a hand go into her back pushing her into the empty room.  She could see a large man behind her from the reflection in the window.  His hand went around her mouth and she could see and feel him stick something into her right arm.  Her hands instinctively grabbed his arm.  She looked at the image of herself with the man’s hand around her mouth.  She tried to remember the image of the man’s face for intelligence purposes.  As he stood behind her, she could approximate his height, about 6’3”.  She stared into the window looking at the reflection of the man’s face.  Her eyes grew heavy as did her body but she continued staring at the reflection of the man’s face.  She thought she had it.  But she grew sleepy—heavy.  She didn’t try to fight the sleepiness.  She tried to fight the fuzzy feeling in her brain.  She had the man’s face but she couldn’t find a box in her brain to store it.  There was some chemical blockage.  He had injected her with something.  Her eyes closed.  Without anywhere in her brain to store the image, she just replayed it for her eyes, as if watching a film on loop.  She kept looping the image of the man’s face in front of her closed eyes.  She tried to stay active even as she fell asleep.  Being able to identify the man would be an important piece of intel, if she made it back home.