Sacré-C?ur’s dome faded to a pale pearl in the light of dawn outside the fourth-story window. Kate’s ears attuned to the night birds, the creaking settling of the old building, distant water gushing in the gutters. It was her second day waiting in the deserted apartment, the Lee-Enfield rifle beside her.
Will this really happen?
She moved into a crouch on the wood parquet floor in front of the balcony and winced. Her knee throbbed—she had bruised it on that stupid fence as the parachute landed in the barnyard. She smelled the faint garden aroma of Pears soap on her silk blouse, which was dampened by perspiration. The June day was already so warm.
She dipped her scarf in the water bottle, wiped her face and neck. Took another one of the pink pills and a swig of water. She needed to stay awake.
As apricot dawn blushed over the rooftop chimneys, she checked the bullets, calibrated and adjusted the telescopic mount, as she had every few hours. The spreading sunrise to her left outlined the few clouds like a bronze pencil, and lit her target area. No breeze; the air lay still, weighted with heat. Perfect conditions.
“Concentrate on your target, keep escape in the back of your mind,” her handler, Stepney, had reminded her en route to the airfield outside London Friday night. “You’re prepared. Follow the fallback protocol.” His last-minute instruction, as she’d zipped up the flight suit in the drafty hangar: “Always remember who you’re doing this for, Kate.”
“As if I would forget?” she’d told him. She pushed away the memory that engulfed her mind, the towering flames, the terrible cries, and looked him straight in the eye. “Plus, I can’t fail or you’ll have egg all over your face, Stepney.”
As dawn brightened into full morning, Kate laid her arm steady on the gilt chair on which she had propped the rifle. From the fourth floor her shot would angle down to the top step. Reading the telescopic mount, she aligned the middle of the church’s top step and the water-stained stone on the limestone pillar by the door; she’d noted yesterday that the stain was approximately five feet ten inches from the ground. She would have been able to make the shot even without it—three hundred yards was an easy shot from one of the best views of the city. Next, she scoped a backup target, referencing the pillars’ sculptured detail. She’d take a head shot as he emerged from the church’s portico, fire once, move a centimeter to the left and then fire again. Worst-case scenario, she’d hit his neck.
With a wooden cheek rising-piece and a telescopic sight mount on its beechwood stock, the Lee-Enfield weighed about ten pounds. She’d practiced partially disassembling the rifle every other hour, eyes closed, timing herself. She wouldn’t have time to fully strip it. Speed would buy her precious seconds for her escape before her target’s entourage registered the rifle crack and reacted. Less than a minute, Stepney had cautioned, if her target was surrounded by his usual Führer Escort Detachment.
Her pulse thudded as she glanced at her French watch, a Maquet. 7:59 a.m. Any moment now the plane might land.
Kate sipped water, her eye trained on the parishioners mounting Sacré-C?ur’s stairs and disappearing into the church’s open doors: old ladies, working men, families with children in tow. A toddler, a little girl in a yellow dress, broke away from the crowd, wandering along the portico until a woman in a blue hat caught her hand. Kate hadn’t accounted for the people attending Mass. Stupid. Why hadn’t Stepney’s detailed plan addressed that?
She pushed her worry aside. Her gaze focused through the telescopic sight on the top step, dead center. Her target’s entourage would surround him and keep him isolated from French civilians.
That’s if he even comes.
The pealing church bells made her jump, the slow reverberation calling one and all to eight o’clock Mass. Maybe she’d taken too much Dexedrine.
But she kept her grip steady, her finger coiled around the metal trigger, and her eye focused.
A few latecomers hurried up the church steps. Kate recognized the concierge of the