Page 121 of Shadow of Doubt

Another man had received neither shrapnel nor bullets but had had his throat cut from ear to ear and had bled out on the floor. The scene was one of pure, unadulterated carnage.

What wasn’t obvious, however, was who had done the killing. Similar to the site of the first gun battle, where only the fake police vehicles had been left behind, there was basically no additional evidence that might help identify the other shooters.

None of it made any sense. And it was about to get even weirder.

As the first detective on the scene, Gibert had authority to examine the bodies. He and Brunelle were bent over their third corpse when the cop pulled a stack of passports from the man’s pocket. Opening each of them, he showed them to Brunelle.

“My God,” she said. “Those are from the dead Russians in the Bois de Boulogne. Why does this guy have them?”

“I have no idea. The deeper this goes, the more bizarre it gets.”

“What is going on at that embassy? Some kind of internecine warfare?”

Gibert shook his head. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it. Two different groups of Russians, both slaughtered, and no sign of who did it.”

“What’s your gut telling you?” she asked, genuinely meaning it this time, rather than tossing it off as a flippant barb as she had two mornings ago in Jadot’s kitchen.

“It looks like these guys have evolved. They sent a lot more personnel this time.”

“Doesn’t appear to have made any difference.”

“No, it doesn’t,” the cop replied. “Whoever they’re up against are good.Verygood.”

“I agree,” said Brunelle. “Butwhoare they? Other Russians? French? Why the gangland-style combat? What the hell are they fighting over? And what does any of this have to do with Jadot’s murder?”

Gibert shrugged. They were all good questions. He just didn’t have any good answers. He didn’t even have any bad answers.

“And why the medical clinic?” she asked, throwing more questions on the pile. “What’s the connection with the Bois de Boulogne?”

“That one,” the cop replied, “I think I can answer. Or at least I can make a relatively well-informed guess. The Russians came here in search of one, or more, of their enemies who was injured at the last gunfight. They bulked up the size of their force and came in hard, smashing through the lobby door and charging up the elevator and both stairwells.”

“But their opponents were waiting for them,” Brunelle continued.“They set up IEDs and, along with their guns, were able to take down twelve men and disappear.”

Gibert nodded. “We’ll want to send a bulletin to every hospital in the city. We’ll also want to start pulling CCTV footage. Nobody simplydisappears.”

“I’ll get MoMo going on the footage right away,” she said as her phone started to ring. Pulling it from her pocket, she looked at the caller ID. “Speak of the devil.

“Agent Brunelle,” she stated, activating the call and raising the phone to her ear.

She listened for several moments as MoMo filled her in on the startling information he had just learned.

“Are yousure?” she stressed. “I’m talking, absolute, one hundred percent, watertight certainty. Because if you’re wrong, we’re worse than fucked. President Mercier is going to bring back the guillotine.”

After a few more words back and forth, Brunelle said to MoMo, “Send it to me. I want to see it for myself.”

With that, she ended the call.

“What was that all about?” Gibert asked.

“I’ll tell you in the car.”

“Where are we going?”

Taking out her pistol and making sure a round was chambered, she replied, “To conduct the biggest bust of our careers.”

CHAPTER 70

BETHESDA

---