the eighth century, the archangel Michael had appeared to Aubert, the bishop of Avranches, and told him to build a church on the island. It was why Michael McElhone had taken the name “Aubertin.” He had always felt a special kinship with Mont-Saint-Michel. The fact that it had been founded by an Irishman only made that kinship stronger.
After visiting a couple of times while still living in Paris, he realized this was where he belonged. Packing up his meager belongings, he moved to Normandy.
He survived on a small pension from the Foreign Legion, which he augmented by working as a private tour guide for wealthy tourists. The business, though, was spotty—and he had his eyes set on a beautiful house with a view of the ocean. So, to pump up his bank account, he fell back on what he did best—killing.
Being a tour guide was a great cover, and he actually enjoyed it. The challenge was saying no to wet work contracts during tourist season.
None of the other guides disappeared during the spring and summer. That was bread-and-butter time. They normally bumped into each other several times a week, if not a day, making the rounds at the same sights. Often, when things got really booked up, they even referred clients to each other.
Dropping off the grid would have been highly unusual, and something he wouldn’t have been predisposed to do. But then, Lieu Van Trang had contacted him.
For lack of a better term, Trang was his business manager. On those off-season occasions when he did take contracts, that’s who they came from. This time, though, he had offered something quite different. He wasn’t operating as his business manager, but rather he wanted to be partners.
The eccentric and notoriously security-conscious Vietnamese would only discuss the deal face-to-face. He had family in Paris and would use the opportunity to see them as cover for their meeting. It was only a train ride for Aubertin and so he had agreed.
Because of its colonial past, Paris was home to the oldest Vietnamese community in the Western world. There were said to be, at any given time, more than 100,000 people of Vietnamese descent within the city limits. Unlike the Chinese or North Africans, they weren’t congregated in one particular neighborhood. Instead, they were spread out, many of them having even married into traditional French families.
Trang had access to a Buddhist temple in the 17th arrondissement and had suggested they meet there. It was safe and no one would bother them. Aubertin, though, didn’t like it—for the same reason he would never take a meeting in a French mosque.
The security services in France were granted a lot of latitude when it came to bugging and surveilling houses of worship. Perhaps they weren’t interested in anyone at Trang’s temple, but he wasn’t willing to roll the dice. He told him to find another location.
Trang came back to him with a restaurant owned by one of his cousins. It was a much better idea. Unlike Buddhist temples, fair-skinned, blue-eyed Westerners walked into Asian restaurants all the time in Paris.
They had met in a private room in the back. Trang had been in high spirits. In fact, Aubertin didn’t know that he had ever seen him like that. After ordering food and drinks, Trang had gotten down to business.
He had just been assigned the largest contract killing in history—one hundred million dollars. The target was an American intelligence operative. He had no idea who the client was. It had been arranged by a middleman, someone Trang had worked with before.
Allegedly, the client was so eager for the contract to be filled, the middleman had instructed Trang to put it out to a select pool of assassins, simultaneously. Whoever killed the intel operative first would receive the money. Trang, though, had his own idea.
He would make it look like he had followed all of the instructions, but in reality he and Aubertin would take the money for themselves and split it fifty-fifty.
“You should never steal from the people you work for.”
“It’s not stealing if the job gets done,” Trang had said. And then, he had laid out his plan.
It was a bold collection of double crosses. Not only would the client’s wishes be ignored, but the assassin who bagged Scot Harvath would end up getting a bullet in the head.
Aubertin would be a fool not to wonder whether Trang had a final double cross prepared for him. If he chose to follow this path, he would have to