Lee Child - First Thrills

“Whoever’s running this hasn’t let us down yet,” Matosian said. “We’re here because they drew us here. I think that even though it goes against my every instinct, the best move now is simply to wait until they contact us. Otherwise, the trail simply ends here, and that I can’t accept. Not after all we’re been through.”

As though on cue, the tuxedoed waiter appeared at the table. “Mr. Matosian?” he queried.

Matosian looked up expectantly. “Guilty.”

“There’s a phone call for you at the reception kiosk.”

Flashing a quick and knowing glance at Chloe, Matosian stood and turned to accompany the waiter back to the small podium near the restaurant’s entrance. There he picked up the headset of the old-fashioned telephone and said hello.

“Gato,” came the cryptic reply in an electronically scrambled male voice.

“Gato yourself,” Matosian snapped, “and the horse it rode in on. Tell me what this is all about right now or I’m out of it. We’re both out of it.”

“How do you know you can trust the woman?”

“You killed her sister, damn you. That’s how I know. She wouldn’t be in this at all if it weren’t for that.”

“Her sister was collateral damage,” the voice said. “It couldn’t be helped. And unless you’re very careful, the same fate may befall her, too. And in the very near term. Do you hear what I’m saying?”

Matosian, suddenly now as close to panic as he’d ever been, raised his eyes and found Chloe still seated at their table, finishing her foie gras, relaxed and beautiful. “I hear you,” he managed to get out. “What are my instructions?”

The voice didn’t hesitate. “The best thing you can do is get to your hotel as soon as you can.”

“Who are you?”

“Call me Honest Abe, but don’t waste any time thinking about me. Time is of the essence now. Now! This second. ” The voice repeated with metallic urgency. And then, with a click, the connection went dead.

Matosian hung up and walked as quickly as he could without calling attention to himself back to his table. Chloe looked up at him questioningly as he took out his wallet. He was just dropping a thousand-euro bill on the table when the waiter reappeared with an amuse-bouche , some sort of superlight looking spoon-sized quenelle in a saffron broth, which he placed in front of Chloe.

Matosian leaned over her and rasped out, “Don’t touch that. Don’t take another bite.”

“But monsieur…” the waiter demurred.

Matosian straightened to his full height. “Non, monsieur. Pourquoi pas vous même le mangez?”-“Why don’t you eat it yourself?”

The waiter went white.

“Je suis sérieux,” Matosian said. “I’m serious. Just take that little bite.” Then, suddenly, the tension and danger of the past few days took over and Matosian took the little proffered spoon and in one fluid and lightning motion forced the waiter’s hand up to his mouth, where he stuffed the little ball of dough and held the man’s jaw shut for another couple of seconds.

As soon as he let go, the waiter spit the dough out and grabbed for one of the glasses of water on the table. At the same instant, Matosian grabbed Chloe’s hand and forcibly lifted her out of her seat. “We’re out of time here,” he told her.

Behind her, the waiter had taken one step back toward the kitchen before his knees seem to give out from under him and he fell headlong into the spirits tray.

“Now! Now! Now!” Matosian pulled Chloe along behind him as the crowd in the restaurant rose almost as a single unit to see what had caused the disturbance. They were both walking double-time, holding hands, past the standing, sometimes screaming, panicking patrons and toward the exit and the long elevator ride down. But then Matosian, thinking better of using the elevator, led her back even farther to the little-used stairway with its three hundred or so steps to the ground.

When that door had closed behind them, Chloe pulled her hand away, stopping him. “What was that about?”

“This is about believing the warning I got over the phone. And, by the way,” he added, “I’ve got my instructions now, or as good as I’m going to get them.”

“What are they?”

“It’s still not completely clear. But one thing is.”

“What’s that?”

“We’ve got to get to the hotel. Like yesterday.”

And taking her hand again, he led her down the clanging and darkened stairway and out at the base of the Eiffel Tower.

“Something’s changed,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“This isn’t the way we left this room,” Matosian said as soon as they’d come through the door and double-locked it behind them.

“What’s different?” Chloe said. “I don’t see…”

But he had already crossed to the table in front of the couch. It held a variety of magazines and travel guides fanned out artistically. But within the fan, two of the magazines were folded open rather than to their covers. Matosian picked up the first one, glanced at its description of fine hotels in Washington, D.C., and then immediately grabbed the second, opened to an article on Abraham Lincoln called “The Great Emancipator.”

He stood stock-still for a long moment. Chloe came up behind him and put her arms around him. “What is it?” she said.

But, his heart breaking, Matosian kept his face straight as he turned to her. “I’ve got to go now,” he said. “You’ll be safe here.”

“But…” Her doe eyes filled with tears. “I thought that you and I…”

“We will,” he said. “But I’ve got to finish this. And it won’t be safe for you where I have to go. If the warning we got in the restaurant meant anything, that much was clear. I’ve got to do this alone.”

And so saying, he kissed her one last time and strode for the door. “What ever you do,” he said as he turned at the door, “lock this behind me and don’t let anyone in, not even hotel staff. I’ve paid for your room for a week, and I’ll be back to you before then.”

“Don!” She ran across to him. “I’m afraid. I don’t know…”

He quieted her with a last kiss. “Wait for me,” he said. “Trust me.”

And with that, he was gone.

It was close to 4:00 A.M. when Matosian mounted the steps at the end of the Capitol Mall. When he got near to the top, he moved into the shadow of the imposing structure and could just make out in front of him the looming bulk of the sixteenth president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln.

The night was dead quiet and surprisingly warm. Matosian still wore his tuxedo from the Restaurant Jules Verne in Paris-there had been no time to change, and certainly not as he flew his own jet alone over the Atlantic, wrestling with his unanswered questions, his demons, and most of all, least familiarly, with his emotions.

But now he was at the end, and there was no time for emotion.

He got to the last step, paused, took a breath, and then continued forward under the massive stone ceiling and into the monument. The place seemed to be made of darkness itself. Then, steeling himself, he came forward more and then more, step by step. Finally, he stopped.

With the laser light that had served him so well in the pump house in London, now he shone its beam over the words of the Gettysburg Address on his right, then over to the Second Inaugural Address on the left. He stopped on the words, “with malice toward none; with charity for all” and somehow he felt anew that however this whole terrible affair turned out, he was proud to be doing this important work for his country, proud to be an American.