“They were starting to set fire to cars when I got here,” he told her. He followed her into the kitchen, where she made coffee. It was only ten in the morning, and she turned the TV on so they could see what was happening on the various streets in Paris. Violence was erupting everywhere.

“Does this get them what they want?” he asked her, fascinated by it.

“No, they wind up hurt or in jail, but they do a hell of a lot of damage before that happens. It’s pathetic—and a crime what they do to the city. They actually come from other cities during protests, just to loot and burn and vandalize and destroy property. The real protestors are usually peaceful, but it’s the bad ones and the hoodlums who blend in with them who do all the damage. They shouldn’t allow them to demonstrate anymore, it always turns into this now. People forget that this is a country that loves revolution, and the French think it’s their civil right to protest about just anything. But this isn’t protesting, it’s mass destruction.” She was angry, seeing the city she loved so torn apart and damaged. They could see that violence was breaking out on the streets all over Paris, mostly in public squares and in front of national monuments. And on the fancier streets of expensive stores, rioters were breaking store windows and rushing into shops to steal whatever they could, as the police followed, grossly outnumbered.

The air outside her apartment was thick with smoke from tear gas and burning cars. The rioters were building barricades on the streets with anything they could find, even tires they ripped off cars before setting fire to them. Streets were blocked and there were seething crowds everywhere. The riot police wearing helmets and shields turned the water cannons on them after that, which barely slowed them down. The regular rioters had gas masks to protect them from the tear gas. They had come prepared, with sledgehammers to destroy cars and bus stop shelters wherever they passed. The riot police were herding them away from her building, but Mike wasn’t reassured by what he was seeing, and glad he had picked up the gun at the embassy.

They peeked outside between the shutters again, and it was a madhouse on the street. Her security guards were alert and observing at the windows. People were digging cobblestones out of the pavement and throwing them through windows, some of them wrapped in oil-soaked flaming rags to set fires in apartments once they landed. Theo’s security had placed fire extinguishers next to each window.