House of War. Scott Mariani

out of Paris.’

      ‘We’ll take care of that. Meantime, you can lie low here. The Corsicans will never find you.’

      ‘I appreciate your help, chief.’

      ‘Just like old times,’ Ben said. ‘And there’s something else I need you to do for me.’

      Across Paris, Nazim al-Kassar was preparing to meet with his elder superior, Ibrahim al-Rashid, in a few hours’ time when the old man’s plane landed. Nazim feared few things in this life, and even fewer people. But though he appeared outwardly calm, he was nervous about the meeting for which al-Rashid was flying in specially from his current base in Pakistan. It was a rare event for the venerable, wise Imam to leave his protected haven, underlining the critical importance of their plan. With so much at stake and the date of the shipment fast approaching, Nazim had a great deal on his mind.

      Nazim’s driver in the silver Mercedes was an associate named Muhammad, as many were, in their different spellings. After leaving the woman’s apartment they had sped across the city to the expensive hotel where Nazim had a luxury suite under the false name of an Omani businessman called Khalil Alfazari.

      Nazim had instructed Muhammad to wait downstairs in the lobby, and gone up to his room alone. The first thing he did upon entering the suite was to wash his hands very carefully and thoroughly. This was required after touching an infidel woman, for they were considered unclean in the sight of Allah and the dictates of Nazim’s faith strictly forbade him from taking part in prayer unless he were first cleansed.

      Once that important duty was done, he had stripped off the tainted clothes that would not be worn again, and stepped into the marble shower. He’d washed himself all over and let the hot water pummel his broad, muscular shoulders as he reflected on his morning’s work. He was glad to have taken care of the Juneau woman personally. It would have taken only a snap of his fingers to have had one of his trusted associates do it for him, but Nazim believed strongly that cleansing the world of another filthy, shameless infidel whore would bring him closer to Allah. Moreover, she had posed a serious threat to their plans. Her elimination had been ordered without a second’s hesitation.

      While pleased with his killing of the unclean whore, he was annoyed with himself for having failed on other counts. The wiretap that had been placed on her landline phone had indicated that soon after her return from Tripoli she had attempted to make contact with a woman called Françoise. That was all the information they had on her, no surname. But the phone message that Romy Juneau had left for her suggested that the woman was someone with whom she was keen to share information. A reporter or journalist, maybe. Which made her potentially highly dangerous to their plans, if their suspicions about Romy Juneau were correct. The wiretap on the landline have yielded nothing more, which implied that Juneau might since have been in contact with this Françoise by mobile phone, whether spoken or texted.