Free Covert One 3 - The Paris Option by Robert Ludlum

place looked like the inside of every bedouin tent in which he had sat miserable and cross-legged from the Sahara to all the godforsaken desert outposts of the former empire where he had served in his time. Moroccan rugs covered every window and lay two deep in a cushion on the floor. Algerian, Moroccan, and Berber hangings and artifacts decorated the walls, and the leather and wood furniture was low and hard.
    With a sigh, the captain lowered himself to a chair inches off the floor, grateful that at least he was not expected to sit cross-legged on the floor. For a moment of deacute;jagrave; vu, he half-expected hot sand to gust from under the tent's walls and burn around his ankles.
    But Bonnard was not in the Sahara, nor in a tent, and he had more pressing matters on his mind than an illusion of camel dung and blowing sand. His expression was fierce as he warned in French, “Sending that man to kill Martin Zellerbach in the hospital was a stupid move, M. Mauritania. Idiocy! How did you think he'd pull it off and escape successfully? They'd have caught him and flayed the truth out of him. And with Zellerbach's doctor friend there, too. Merde! Now the Sreteacute; has doubled their alert, and it'll be ten times more difficult to eliminate Zellerbach.”
    As Captain Bonnard ranted, the second man in the room, whom the captain had called M. Mauritania, the only name by which he was known in the international underworld of spies and criminals, remained expressionless. He was a stocky figure, with a round face and soft, well-manicured hands below the cuffs of a white shirt impeccably shot from the sleeves of a pearl-gray English suit direct from some custom tailor on Savile Row. His small features and bright blue eyes contemplated Bonnard and his outrage with the long-suffering patience of someone forced to listen to the incessant barking of a dog.
    When the captain finally finished his tirade, Mauritania, who wore a French beret, tucked a lock of brown hair behind his ear and answered in French, in a voice as hard as his hands were soft. “You underestimate us, Captain. We're not fools. We sent no one to assassinate Dr. Zellerbach at the hospital or anywhere else. It would've been stupid to do at any time, and more than stupid to do now, when it's quite possible he'll never regain consciousness anyway.”
    Bonnard was taken aback. “But we decided there was no way we could take the chance of letting him live. He might know too much.”
    “You decided. We decided to wait. That's our choice to make, not yours,” Mauritania said in a tone that ended the matter. “In any case, you and I have more important matters to consider.”
    “Such as, if you didn't send that assassin, who did? And why?”
    Mauritania inclined his small, neat head. “I wasn't thinking of that. But, yes, it's a concern, and we'll discover all we can in the matter. Meanwhile, we've studied the notes of the research assistant, which you gave us. We find they coincide precisely, if sketchily, with Chambord's own data and reports. Nothing appears to have been forgotten or lost. Now that we have them, there should be no trouble from that direction. They've already been destroyed.”
    “Which will keep our activities nicely secret, as I told you,” Bonnard said, a touch of colonial condescension in his certainty. He heard it and did not care. “But I'm not at all sure about allowing Zellerbach to live. I'd suggest”
    “And I,” Mauritania cut him off, “suggest you leave Zellerbach to us. You must pay attention to greater dangers, such as the police investigation into the 'suicide' of Chambord's assistant. Under the circumstances, more than the police will be asking questions. How is the official probe into the suicide proceeding?”
    The Mauritania had pulled Bonnard back, and for a moment the captain fought his disgust. But on the other hand, the reason he was doing business with the underworld leader was that he needed someone tough and savvy, as