Private Paris (Private 10)

3:45 p.m.

HOW CAN I make you burn?

How do I make you come alive like a creature from hell’s fire?

In what used to be a linen factory along the Canal de l’Ourcq, these questions consumed the woman standing on scaffolding, absently stroking her long braid of mahogany hair, and studying the giant’s skeleton.

She was in her midthirties, with dusky skin and haunting pewter eyes, and she wore clothes that were completely at odds with her exotic beauty: black steel-toe work boots, double-faced and riveted canvas pants, and a flame-resistant cape and apron over a heavy denim shirt.

She turned from the skeleton, still unsure how it was all going to work, and looked for answers among the various materials she’d bought or salvaged and transported to the building. In the last month she’d amassed two tons of number 9 rebar in twenty-foot lengths. She had sections of battered steel conduit torn from culverts during a big highway job out toward Reims. And she had stacks of scrap sheet metal, angle iron, and galvanized pipe gathered from junkyards and metal recycling plants across northern France.

The massive steel posts came from an old engine repair shop in Orléans. They were already standing, four of them anchor-bolted into the cement floor. I beams had been hoisted and pinned in place as well, forming an open-sided rectangular box forty-five feet long, twenty-five feet wide, and thirty feet high. From a structural point of view, the heavy work was over. The superstructure of the skeleton was standing. And already she could see the vague dimensions of what was to come forming in her—

“Haja!” a man’s voice called.

Haja startled and looked around to see a rugged man in his late thirties emerge from a door in the corner. Thick neck, bronze skin, short black hair. He carried a gym bag and was dressed in a sweat suit. Cleats hung around his neck.

“Up here, Émile,” she called.

Émile Sauvage spotted her and said, “Shouldn’t you be getting ready for your date?”

“Henri won’t be ready until nine,” she said. “I have plenty of time.”

“You’ll text when you’re inside?”

“I remember the plan,” she said.

“I’ll see you there.”

“I look forward to it, chéri,” she said. “AB-16 at last.”

Sauvage smiled. “AB-16 at long last.”

Haja blew him a kiss and wat

ched him go out the main door. She heard the bolt thrown before she turned again to look at the skeleton.

Seeing it from this new angle, she had a sudden, intense inspiration, saw how she might begin the process of creation. Rushing about now, feeling feverish, Haja climbed down off the scaffolding. She grabbed a pair of heavy bolt cutters and snipped off several lengths of rebar. She set them on the floor next to the near post, and then wheeled over the welding tanks, hose, and torch.

Putting on the helmet and shield, she took up the torch and the striker, and then turned on the oxygen and acetylene gas and ignited the hissing mixture. Even through the smoked glass, the flame was searing in its intensity.

I can sculpt you, she thought. I can create you from scrap.

But how do I make you burn like this welding torch?

How do I create an apocalyptic vision that France will never, ever forget?

Chapter 3

Montfermeil, eastern suburbs of Paris

4:45 p.m.

SHORTLY AFTER LOUIS Langlois and I spoke with Sherman Wilkerson we headed east out of Paris in workmen’s blue jumpsuits that featured the logo of a bogus plumbing company. Louis drove a Mia electric-powered delivery vehicle, which looked like a minivan back home, only much smaller. The tiny van had the same fake plumbing logo painted on the rear panels and back door.

Louis said he used the Mia and the plumbing disguises often during surveillance jobs, but tonight we were using them to stay alive.

“The areas around the Bondy Forest have always been places of poverty, crime, and violence,” Louis explained. “You’ve read Les Misérables?”