by Allan Topol
“It’s nothing. It looks worse than it is.”
“I’d be happy to give you a bodyguard when you’re in Paris.”
“I’ll be okay. Don’t worry about it.”
She flicked cigar ash into the wastebasket in his office. “I’ve got a significant investment in you. I have to worry.”
“And here I thought you just liked me.”
She smiled. “At least you haven’t lost your sense of humor.”
“That’ll never happen. But I would like to know who sent those two Iranians to kill me.”
She scowled. “I’m working on it, but so far no luck.”
“I figure you have a leak somewhere in your organization.”
“That thought has occurred to me as well, and it doesn’t make me happy.” She paused to puff on her cigar. “You want to tell me what you’re doing now?”
He explained to her about the system of explosions and also what each of the X’s and O’s represented.
“This map of yours,” she said, pointing at the paper on the desk, “is so crude. Aren’t you going to need something more specific?”
Well, isn’t that nice, he thought. I put the bait out there, and she snapped it up. “You bet, but I’ll need detailed maps to do that. They’ll be in the next shipment I’ll need from Saudi Arabia.”
She looked concerned. “It’s already September 16. There’s not much time.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll do what it takes to meet your deadline. Victor will have my wish list tomorrow.”
She seemed satisfied. “I hate to admit this,” she said, “but if you weren’t involved, I’d have nothing at all after the coup if the Saudi king gave the order to blow up those oil fields.”
He gave her a knowing smile. “Unfortunately, that’s true.”
She puffed deeply on her cigar and blew the smoke over his head. “If Victor gives you a problem tomorrow about the new materials you want, ask to see me. We’ll work it out.”
“I appreciate that.”
She turned around and left the office with a cloud of smoke trailing behind her.
For several minutes David sat staring at his rough map, wondering, What the hell am I doing? Am I helping her succeed? Have I in fact become a part of this conspiracy?
It’s not that simple, he told himself. If the coup takes place, I can’t let the Saudi king blow up those oil fields under any circumstance. To destroy that much precious fossil fuel and to do that much environmental damage would be criminal under any circumstances.
Satisfied that what he was doing could be morally justified, he returned to his crude map. He worked on into the afternoon, making progress, but biding his time until Colette left, which occurred at six o’clock. Again, he waited a full thirty minutes before trying to enter the Task Force computer system. Then he punched in his new guess at a password—“guillotine”—and held his breath.
Presto, it worked. He was in the system.
Nervously, he glanced over his shoulder, half-expecting Madame Blanc to make another surprise visit, but no one was there. He began with the concept the Company had pounded into his head in his initial training sessions. “Follow the money.”
He pulled up the financials for Operation Guillotine.
Madame Blanc’s accounts were professional and precise. Expenditures were arranged in a long column. There were payments for weapons, to Granita Munitions, a French company, with each purchase separately listed with date and amount. There were payments for air transport for the weapons; payments for shipping permits and related expenditures, which he assumed meant bribes to French officials; payments for communication systems; payments for PDF overhead attributed to the project; payments for investigators’ expenses. He kept looking for a payment to a Saudi officer or officers, but there wasn’t a single Saudi name on the payment list. All the payees seemed to be French.
Then his eyes focused on the payment to him last week of $2 million, deposited into the Union Bank of Switzerland. It even showed the number of his Swiss bank account. The payee was identified as Greg Nielsen/David Ben Aaron. She didn’t use his code name of Outlaw. With this computer record, how could he ever persuade someone that he wasn’t a co-conspirator? No doubt, that’s what she intended. He decided to scan back over the names of the French payees. Suddenly a name popped out at him. Two payments of $15 million each had been made to a Henri Napoleon. The amounts had been deposited into a Credit Swiss account on the Bahnhoffstrasse in Zurich. The account number was 55XQ3. David committed the entries to memory.
Then it all fell into place for him. Henri Napoleon must be the code name for the Saudi military officer who would be leading the coup. These deposits were Madame Blanc’s payoff to him.
All of that was fine, but it still left him with the question: who was the Saudi represented by the code name Henri Napoleon?
He looked at the calendar on his wristwatch. October 6 was less than three weeks away. Having the name Henri Napoleon didn’t tell him a damn thing about the Saudi heading up the coup.
He heard the sound of approaching footsteps in the corridor. David quickly turned off the computer and tensed, pretending to be studying the map he had made this afternoon.
It was one of the security guards. Gripping his gun, the guard paused in the doorway and eyed David suspiciously.
“I’m authorized by Madame Blanc to be working here this evening,” David said.
The guard grunted and moved on.
David waited five minutes before he started up the computer again. Working as swiftly as possible, but pausing frequently to glance over his shoulder, he searched through the rest of the files of Operation Guillotine. They laid out in detail the developing and marketing program that PDF had for Saudi oil following the coup. They projected price increases and PDF profits, by reducing output. Madame Blanc had a carefully developed plan to reassemble the oil cartel of the seventies and to drive up the market price of crude, thereby maximizing PDF’s profits. If she managed to pull it off, the U.S. economy would be hurt the most, because America had never done anything other than talk about energy conservation.
David continued searching the file. There was nothing about the Saudi ringleader.
Satisfied that he had gotten everything he could from the file, he turned off the computer. Then he closed his eyes, put his weary head in his hands, and rested it on the desk, thinking. There had to be a way to get at Henri Napoleon.
On the way back to the hotel, an idea began taking shape in his mind. At first it was fuzzy, but by the time the taxi dropped him at the Metro so he could take his two subway rides back to the Hotel Gironde, the idea was becoming a plan. It was raining again tonight, not hard, just a light drizzle. David was impervious to it. From the Metro exit he walked to a small brasserie a few blocks from the hotel. He ordered steak et frites and a bottle of Côtes-du-Rhône. As he ate and sipped the wine, he fleshed out the idea with more and more details. It was coming alive. It might even work.
He spotted a pay phone near the lavatory in the back of the brasserie. When he finished eating, he called Victor at home. “I’m not in trouble tonight,” he said.
Recalling how David had wrecked his plans last evening, Victor sounded derisive when he replied, “Glad to hear that.”
“I want to meet you tomorrow morning at eight to give you a status report.”
“My office.”
David had expected Victor to suggest that location. He was ready with his response. “No, I’m still worried about another attack by the Iranians. They may have a stakeout there. Let’s use the same brasserie we did today, at the end of Boulevard George V. I’ll get a table in the back. We’ll have coffee together, then walk along the river and talk. No risk of being overheard.”
Victor groaned. He had an early meeting with another client. He’d have to reschedule that. “I’ll be there,” the lawyer said reluctantly.
Next, David called Sagit on her cell phone.
“Can you meet me at the Louvre, near the I. M
. Pei entrance?”
“I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
* * *
Sagit was glad he had picked the meeting place in front of the Louvre. The grassy area was deserted. The rain had stopped. She could easily spot him there, standing alone. She didn’t see anyone else.
They fell in stride together, like a couple out for an evening stroll, heading toward the Tuileries.
He told her what he had in mind. Then he said, “I think we should fly from here to London.”
“It’s too risky,” she replied. “They may be watching you leave the country.”
“Good point.”
“Let’s go back to Israel first. It’ll take a little longer, but we should still make it in time. Besides, I’ll need to get authorization and make arrangements. It’s easier for me to do all of that in Israel.”
“You’ll need a picture of Victor. The others won’t know what he looks like. Maybe the French Lawyers Association has pictures of its members.”
“I’ve got a better idea. Where are you meeting him in the morning?”
“At the brasserie where Avenue George V meets the river, at eight o’clock.”
“Make sure you come out of the brasserie with him, and stop to tie your shoe for a second. When he stops, I’ll take some pictures.”
He looked alarmed. “Won’t he see you?”
“Telephoto lens. Don’t worry, I’ll set up somewhere he won’t see me. Taking his picture is easy.” Their eyes met. “What’s worrying me is whether this great idea of yours will work.”
“I admit it’s a bit of a long shot.” He looked ambivalent about it himself.
“I can’t think of anything better right now.”
“What about Daphna? Will your friend from the French secret police do anything for us?”
“He’s willing to help. I asked him to get me a printout from the phone company of all of the phone calls made in and out of Victor Foch’s office in the last month and the addresses of the parties to those calls.”
“You figure that Victor was in touch with the place where they’re holding Daphna?”
“That’s what I’m hoping.”
On the rue de Rivoli, adjoining the park, two police cars were approaching with their sirens blaring. David paused for a minute preparing to cut and run if they were coming after him, but they sped by without stopping.
“What did your friend tell you about the men who tried to kill me last night?”
They were passing under a light, and he saw her grimace. “First of all, Victor lied to you. You only killed the one you shot. The other one was alive when he was taken to jail. When Victor came down to the jail, he was in a rage. He wanted to know who sent these people. He told the police to use every means at their disposal to find out.”
“Which is consistent with what he said. I mean, with the idea he didn’t send them.”
“Well that’s one possibility. But, anyhow, they tried to beat the information out of the one you had been pounding in the courtyard across from the Bristol. They weren’t as gentle with him as you were. Eventually, he died. Score another one for the French police.”
“Are you certain of this?”
“The time of death was originally recorded as six-thirty a.m. It was later changed to nine-thirty p.m. before the suspect got to the jail.”
He wasn’t surprised by what the police had done. Only that it had been done so crudely. Obviously, they didn’t think anyone would check the records. “What did the police learn from this gentle interrogation?”
“All they could find out was that the two men were in fact Iranians, and the order came from Tehran to kill you. Despite Victor’s insistence, the prisoner either didn’t know or wouldn’t say who sent him.”
* * *
The next morning, in the brasserie, as David and Victor sipped coffee, they discussed opera. The two men shared a love for Giuseppe Verdi, the musical genius born in a small farming village, who had little formal training as a young man and was then rejected by the Milan Conservatory as being too old when he applied. David’s favorite opera was the refined La Traviata, while Victor preferred the brutality of Rigoletto. Anyone who overheard their conversation would have thought they were two friends who met for a few minutes before work.
It was a bright sunny morning, and as they left the brasserie, David stopped, bent down and tied his shoelace. He never looked up. He assumed that Sagit was in place, that she was focused on Victor and snapping away. They walked at a leisurely pace along the river. On the other side, the Eiffel Tower cast an imposing shadow over them.
“What have you accomplished in the last two days?” Victor demanded. “Madame Blanc is anxious to know.”
“I figured as much. The answer is that I’ve done everything I can with the information I have.”
Victor shot David a skeptical glance. “Meaning what?”
“I’m about three-fourths of the way finished.”
“What do to you mean by finished?”
Looking Victor squarely in the eyes David answered without a trace of hesitation. “I mean, having a plan to neutralize both systems—the palace defenses and the oil field explosions.”
“So how do you finish the job?”
“I need some additional information and materials.”
The Frenchman was suspicious. “Like what?”
He gave Victor a handwritten piece of paper. “It’s all there. It includes detailed maps of the oil fields. Approximate numbers and types of Saudi military personnel that will be available for the attackers. Precisely what equipment they’ll have as well. Not names of individuals, because I know that’s sensitive, but numbers and types.” David paused and waited until Victor looked up from the paper before continuing. “Don’t use fax or telephone lines to get the information. That’s too dangerous. I want you to have documents with the information brought to me from Saudi Arabia to Paris—just as you brought the computer discs.”
The lawyer was still convinced that David had some other agenda. They walked in silence for several minutes while Victor thought about David’s request.
“You’re asking for quite a bit.”
David shrugged his shoulders. He already knew how Madame Blanc would respond. He didn’t have to appear anxious. He was in the driver’s seat. “If you’re afraid the messenger will be shot, then I’ll ask Madame Blanc myself. But she said you were to be the intermediary.”
Victor gloated, believing that David had overplayed his hand. “The point is that Madame Blanc won’t like this new development. She expected you to be done by now.”
“Look, what I’m asking is fairly simple and straightforward,” David said. “Talk to her. I’ll stick around Paris until I get an answer. In case she wants to talk to me.”
“And after that?”
“I’m going back to Israel until the new stuff comes from Saudi Arabia. I don’t want to raise any suspicions by being gone too long. When you have what I need, you fax me in Israel, the way you did the last time, and I’ll be back in Paris the next day.”
Victor stared into the muddy Seine, weighing David’s words.
“Be back in two hours at that brasserie at the intersection of George V,” the lawyer finally said, “where we met this morning. I’ll get a message to you.”
* * *
“I don’t like it at all,” Victor said to Madame Blanc after reporting on his conversation with David.
They were seated in her vast corner office at the PDF headquarters. Outside, the sun was struggling to shine between heavy clouds.
She was wearing a burgundy Valentino wool pantsuit. As she took off the jacket that covered a cream colored silk blouse and hung it over the back of her desk chair, she said, “what don’t you like about it?”
“I don’t trust him.”
“You never have.”
“Don’t you understand my concern? Why does he need so much additional information? Why won’t he stay in Paris until it arrives?” He looked sharply at he
r. “He’s got his own agenda, and it worries me.”
She paused to puff on her cigar. “Look, if it weren’t for Greg Nielsen we would never have known about the system to blow up the oil fields, and we’d have ended up with nothing.”
“Our Saudi friends should have known about it.”
She was getting irritated with him. “They should have, but they didn’t. That’s precisely my point.”
“So he gave us something useful to gain our confidence. And, by the way, he was paid a lot of money for that. I still think...”
She laughed. “You know what I think?”
He waited, not wanting to hear the answer.
“It’s the green-eyed monster raising its ugly head. I think you’re a jealous of his relationship with me.”
The truth stung, but he denied it, “Nothing could be further from the truth.”
“Don’t give it another thought.” She pointed her forefinger at him. “Be patient, Victor. I’ll get what I need from him, and then I’ll dispose of him.” She squashed out her cigar in an ashtray and tossed the butt in the wastebasket. “About like that.”
* * *
Victor wasn’t content to be patient. Knowing that Madame Blanc would be furious if she ever found out, he arranged to have two private detectives follow David once he left the brasserie. They were both in place before Victor’s driver parked a block away and delivered the envelope with the simple message inside: “We accept your proposal. Have a nice trip home.”
Then Victor waited by the phone. Airport, my ass, he thought. He’s not flying home. He’s meeting somebody in Paris, from the Mossad or the CIA, to brief them.
* * *
David waited to open the envelope until the driver left and read the message. He smiled softly, thinking that Madame Blanc must have taken his side in an argument with Victor. He took his time finishing his espresso.
No sense rushing, he thought. He guessed that Victor had arranged a tail. He wanted to make certain Victor’s people actually saw him board the El Al plane at Charles De Gaulle. So they could let Victor know, and he could grind his teeth. The thought made David smile. He enjoyed staying one step ahead of the French lawyer.