by John Weisman
So much for fantasy. Tom, who had once rear-ended his Agency vehicle and spent thirteen hours on the damn postaction paperwork justifying the expense, backed the bike around the corner, shut the motor off, then wrestled the Beemer onto its stand. Then he went back and surreptitiously observed McWhirter’s wannabe trap for another half minute. He made brief mental notes.
Then he pulled one of the two untraceable 4627 prepaid cell phones he was carrying out of his leather jacket, dialed 17, which is the two-digit toll-free number for the Paris region Gendarmerie Nationale, and, using a Marseillaise accent, told the police operator there was a kidnapping of an American diplomat in progress on rue General de Gaulle in Cormeilles-en-Parisis and that four vehicles were involved. Tom recited the license-plate numbers, described the positions of the Citroëns and the vans on the street, and hung up. Quickly, he pulled the battery out of the cell phone and stomped it with his boot heel. Without a battery, the phone’s position could not be tracked—even by DST.
He strolled back to the BMW, straddled the bike, rolled it off the stand, and turned the ignition key.
11:03. From six blocks away, Tom heard the approaching hee-haw of police cars before the four cars of Americans did. When he saw the two black SWAT vans heading toward rue General de Gaulle, he knew the gendarmes weren’t taking any chances. Before Harry Z. INCHBALD’s team knew what was happening, they’d be swarmed by submachine-gun–toting cops in black fatigues, pulled out of the vehicles, and proned on the ground.
11:04. Tom raised the visor of his helmet, removed the prosthetic, peeled all the remaining cement off his skin, and dropped everything into a plastic baggie, which got stored in one of the saddlebags. Then he backed up the bike, turned it around, and rode to avenue Parmentier. There, he found a café, parked, pulled off his helmet, secured it to the saddle, went to the bar, and ordered a double café crème and a pain au chocolat.
11:58 A.M. Tom paid for the food, returned to the bike, and drove at a leisurely pace back to rue General de Gaulle. He circled the area so he could observe the street from both ends. There was no sign of the Americans—or the police. He drove a couple of blocks farther east, then pulled to the curb and dialed the cell-phone number Adam Margolis had given him.
It was answered after three rings. “This is Adam.”
“Hi, Adam. Guess who.”
There was a pause. “You son of a bitch.”
“What in heaven’s name are you talking about?” Tom played the innocent. “I’m running about an hour late, and I’d—” The phone went dead in Tom’s ear.
Too bad. The kid obviously had no sense of humor. Well, the problem was endemic at Langley these days. They’d all forgotten how to laugh at themselves.
Tom kicked the bike into gear and headed back to St. Denis. At least one thing was clear from the morning’s exercise: 4627 was now officially persona non grata at Paris station.
34
10 NOVEMBER 2003
2:45 P . M .
223 RUE DU FAUBOURG ST. HONORÉ
TOM FLIPPED HIS CELL PHONE CLOSED. “Two containers addressed to Yahia Hamzi’s Boissons Maghreb cleared customs at Orly this morning. He sent his truck to the zone de fret. Our guy at Orly says the bill of lading lists wine and olives. The containers came via Air France cargo. Five pallets.”
“Good.” Reuven Ayalon drummed his fingers on the desk. “Now we wait to see what Hamzi does.” He punched a number into his cell phone. “Let’s see where he is now.” Reuven waited, then spoke in rapid Arabic. He listened, then flipped the phone shut. “He’s still at lunch—he drove to Rimal and he’s eating alone. But he just took a phone call.”
Antony Wyman looked over at Tom. “We’re set, right?”
Tom tapped his cell phone. “Ready and waiting.” Reuven had engineered a false-flag op. He’d decided that the Corsicans would stick out in Pantin. And so, as Reuven explained it to Tom and Tony Wyman, he’d had Milo’s Corsican Mafia contacts recruit a couple of gangbangers from an Algerian drug gang to do the snatch. It was a straight cash deal. The Algerians were told Hamzi was behind in his vig payments and the Corsicans wanted him. Payment was two thousand euros in used banknotes: a grand in advance and the rest on the safe delivery of Hamzi and his Mercedes to a prearranged location in Malakoff, a southern suburb of Paris convenient to the périphérique.
From there, the Corsicans would drive Hamzi to a location in Bagnolet, where Reuven and Tom would meet them. Reuven would set the hook—tell Hamzi he was being flown to Israel for interrogation—then administer a dose of ketamine potent enough to knock the Moroccan out for a couple of hours. The rest would be up to Salah.
Who didn’t have a lot of time to break the Moroccan. If the explosives were indeed in the Orly shipment, then Ben Said was almost certainly in Paris. And he’d want to get his hands on the goods so he could finish rigging the bombs. The interrogation process had to be completed in a matter of hours.
2:52. Tony Wyman paced the research room like a caged animal. He was uncharacteristically nervous. He’d spent the weekend working to unravel the Adam Margolis fiasco—and he didn’t like what he’d discovered. The order to lure Tom Stafford into a compromising situation had come straight from the seventh floor. That actually made sense in a perverted sort of way. If the seventh floor could prove Tom had acted improperly, it could arbitrarily yank his clearance. That would, in turn, put 4627’s entire CIA contract in jeopardy—a loss of more than $30 million over the next twenty months.
But why jettison 4627? It was one of the few sources of accurate and actionable intelligence product coming to Langley these days. Tony debriefed Tom, of course—but without concrete results. They’d even done a chronology and created a time line, starting when Shahram said he’d taken the surveillance pictures of Imad Mugniyah and Tariq Ben Said on rue Lambert and ending with the Iranian’s murder. But nothing made sense.
Oh, they were being gamed. Instinctively, Wyman understood that. But he had no real idea what the game was, or why it was being played. He marched over to the long walnut table and looked down at the chronology again. There was something missing from this puzzle. But what?
Tom had set up an operations center in the 4627 research room over the weekend. They’d had secure phone terminals, three computers, video equipment, and a color laser printer brought in from upstairs. The room itself was pretty secure. There were no windows, the outer walls were well insulated and had white sound running through conduits, and 4627’s technicians swept the place twice a day. He looked across the room to where MJ was Googling something or other on one of the computers.
She’d insisted on accompanying Tony Wyman to the office. “I’m going crazy in that damn hotel room,” is how she’d put it. Wyman agreed readily. She’d already proven herself to be an asset. When she and Tom married, Wyman had already decided, they’d become 4627’s first tandem.
Wyman looked over at her. “MJ?”
She swiveled her chair to face him. “Tony?”
“Do me a favor, will you?” He tapped the folder containing the chronology. “Take a look at this and tell me what’s missing.”
“No problem.”
She logged off the computer, went to the sideboard, and made herself a mug of hot chocolate, which she carried to the side table sitting next to one of the leather club chairs. Then she retrieved the two-page chronology, took a yellow legal pad and a pencil from the long walnut table, dropped into the chair, pulled her reading glasses out of her hair, and stuck them on the end of her nose.
Tom watched her settle in, thinking she was the most beautiful woman on the face of the earth.
3:11 P.M. “Tony,” MJ said, “what about me?”
Wyman’s monocle dropped onto his vest. “What about you what?”
“I’m not in the chronology.”
Wyman gave her a quizzical look. “So?”
“October tenth: Shahram calls Paris station. October twelfth: Shahram visits the embassy. October twelfth: Shahram goes into hiding. Octobe
r fifteenth: Gaza.” She paused. “Okay, now I add myself into the time line. Five P.M., October sixteenth: I send the name Imad Mugniyah to Mrs. ST. JOHN. Very early October seventeenth: Mrs. ST. JOHN calls the seventh floor about my Imad Mugniyah photo. Before I get in, she’s already rejected the picture and she’s looking for a way to get rid of me.” She looked at Tony Wyman. “But the seventh floor has already heard about Imad Mugniyah—a week before.”
“Hmm.” Wyman scratched his chin.
“Then,” MJ continued, “roughly the same time as Mrs. Sin-Gin is telling me to go to hell, Tom is having lunch with Shahram. Shahram gives Tom pictures of Imad Mugniyah and Tariq Ben Said. Shahram knew he’d been set up the previous Sunday. Giving Tom those pictures and the information about Ben Said was his…I don’t know, his insurance, his…something.”
“Not insurance,” Tom broke in. “Look, Shahram had his own agenda with Langley. Maybe he was running a scam, maybe not. It’s possible Shahram wanted to see if he could still put the squeeze on the Agency. It’s also possible he felt justified about asking twenty-five mil if he facilitated Imad’s capture. But then Langley slammed him—didn’t just turn him down but painted a big target on his back.” Tom paused. “Look, Tony, I think Shahram truly believed he’d developed valid information, and he hated these people enough to want to get it out. So he called me.”
“Hoping we’d put it to good use,” Reuven said.
“Good use?” Tony Wyman pulled a vermeil Montblanc rollerball out of his vest and played with it.
“Actionable intelligence. We’d get our hands on Ben Said,” Tom said.
Tony Wyman twirled the Montblanc. “And then what?”
“Turn him over.”
“To whom?”
Tom shrugged. “Ultimately that’s your call, Tony. But if Ben Said was responsible for Jim McGee’s death, we should have him extradited to the U.S.”
“That means a trial. It means a media circus.”
“What about the French?”
“There’s no death penalty in Europe,” Reuven said.
“Which is why the French will never let him be extradited,” Tom added.
Tony Wyman slid the pen back into his vest. “This is all very preliminary,” he said. “It’s a distraction. Right now I’d like to know Langley’s motivation for throwing a wrench at us.” He looked at the others. “That affects our bottom line, lady and gentlemen.”
“Protection of the status quo,” Tom said. “Everybody keeps their jobs.” He tapped the photos MJ had printed from the video he’d shot in Ben Said’s bomb lab. “Can you imagine how long anybody on the seventh floor would be employed if you took these pictures and showed them to Porter Goss. Goss wants George Tenet’s job bad.”
Tony Wyman gave Tom a wary look. “Porter and I were in the same training class—and we’ve stayed in touch.” Wyman scratched his chin. “As I recall, he was an adequate operator.” He paused. “I agree—he wants Tenet’s job, and having one of our own as DCI could improve the situation at DO. But I’m not in favor of a coup—at least for the present.”
“Why?”
“It’s not in our interests.” Wyman’s voice took on an edginess. “Because we have no resolution, Tom. No bad guys in handcuffs. No bombs for show-and-tell.”
Wyman was deflecting. Tom couldn’t believe it. “Tony, I’m serious. Look at what’s happening in the press. Langley is leaking like a sieve these days. It’s goddamn unprecedented. All sorts of stories about how the White House cooked the books on Iraq. Stories about how CIA tried to warn the president that there were no WMDs.” Tom slapped the table with the flat of his hand. “It’s all chaff, Tony. Disinformation. What the Sovs used to call active measures. You know it as well as I do. The president asks the DCI whether or not there are WMDs, and the DCI tells him, ‘It’s a slam dunk,’ even though anyone at Langley worth their salt had doubts about the depth of the program. And now the seventh floor is trying to weasel out of the responsibility for giving everyone—everyone from the White House to the Pentagon to State—either bad intelligence or no intelligence at all. This whole rotten situation is about job security, Tony. No more, no less. We should take what we know to Porter Goss and let him run with it.”
“The answer is no,” Wyman snapped. “Let me be blunt here, Tom: 4627 is not in the business of staging coups at CIA.”
“Maybe we should be.”
“Perhaps you and Reuven should worry more about refining the details of the current operation to ensure we don’t have any flaps and less about the machinations of Washington politics.” There was about thirty seconds of dead air. Then Tony Wyman said, “Thank you, MJ. Your contributions have been enormously valuable.” He picked up the two sheets of time line and the yellow legal pad on which MJ had written her notes, and tucked them under his arm. “You guys keep at it,” he said. “I’m going to make some phone calls.”
When Wyman had left the room, Tom turned to Reuven and spoke in Arabic. “What do you think?”
The Israeli shrugged. “I think he’s a boss. Bosses do what bosses do.” Reuven’s cell phone chirped. He flicked it open and said, “Parle-moi.” Fifteen seconds later, he snapped the instrument shut. “The shipment just left Orly. Our guy’s headed for Boissons Maghreb,” he said. “If he loads any containers of olives into his car, we’ll snatch him.” He looked at Tom. “Let’s get to the warehouse.”
RUE DU CONGO, PANTIN
4:54 P . M .
They were using the small EUREC truck. Reuven, in repairman’s coveralls, a black knit cap, and a bushy mustache attached to his upper lip sat behind the wheel, a cell phone clapped to his ear and a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. Tom was set up in the rear of the blue ÉCLAIRAGE & SIGNALIZATION truck behind a black gauze sniper’s screen that made him invisible to anyone staring through the windshield but didn’t impede the vision of his light-gathering Steiner binoculars or the telephoto lens of the digital Nikon single-lens reflex he’d set up on a tripod. Behind Tom, Milo stretched out, eyes closed, on a dirty cot mattress.
Tom turned toward Milo. “Where are the Algerians?”
“Around,” Milo grunted.
“Not obvious, I hope.”
Milo propped himself up on an elbow. “Did you see them?”
“Not yet.”
“You won’t.” The Corsican lay back down and rested an arm across his eyes.
They’d set up on the south side of rue du Congo, just past the intersection of rue Auger, giving themselves an unobstructed view of the block-square commercial zone of small warehouses, contractors’ storage sheds, and light-industrial companies. They were roughly 175 yards from Bois-sons Maghreb, well within the range of Tom’s 500mm telephoto lens. Hamzi’s facility was, in fact, not a proper warehouse at all, but a deep, moderately wide storefront with basement storage. The place sat between an electrical contractor and a restaurant-supply house. The heavy steel trap-doors to the basement were propped open and the hydraulic lift was level with the sidewalk. Obviously, they were waiting for a shipment.
5:19. The truck from Orly eased up onto the curb and blocked the sidewalk to make unloading easier. Two burly Arabs unbuckled the rubberized canvas sides of the truck, revealing three plastic-wrapped pallets holding what appeared to be cases of wine and two pallets on which were stacked dozens of two-foot-high yellow plastic barrels of olives. Tom shot a dozen or so photos.
5:22. It was growing dark rapidly. As Tom affixed the night-vision device to the camera lens, the truck crew stopped work and lit up cigarettes. That, too, was captured on the Nikon’s memory stick.
5:47. Hamzi arrived in a champagne-colored Mercedes 500-series coupe with Paris plates whose grille and bumpers had been gold-plated. The Moroccan drove up onto the sidewalk and parked.
Reuven heard Tom say, “Pimp your ride much, Yahia?” As the Moroccan exited the car, Tom muttered to himself and shot more pictures.
5:48. Hamzi took a look around—a wary coyote sniffing the wind. He looked much
the same as he had in Shahram’s surveillance photo: clean-shaven, a round, dark face set off by thick-framed eyeglasses with tinted lenses, and a full head of curly black hair. He was dressed in a dark raglansleeved wool overcoat, under which he wore his customary light-colored suit and open-necked shirt. The Moroccan’s body language betrayed nothing untoward. He turned his attention to the cargo and gesticulated, berating the crew, who ground out their cigarettes on the pavement and resumed unloading.
5:53. It had gone completely dark. The first load of wine cartons descended into the Maghreb cellar. The pallets of olives were still untouched. Tom increased the power of the lens, focusing on Hamzi’s head, watching as the Moroccan watched the elevator disappear. Suddenly Hamzi whirled, looking straight into Tom’s lens, as if he sensed the American’s presence.
Rattled, Tom hit the shutter and captured the expression on Hamzi’s face. As he did, it occurred to him that the Moroccan might have heard the shutter, even though the Nikon’s shutter was digital not mechanical. Even though Tom was more than a hundred and fifty yards away and the truck was just one shadow among many.
Tom was nervous. He edged forward and whispered, “Time to make the adjustment, Reuven?”
He had no evidence that they’d been compromised. But there was something about Hamzi’s actions that made Tom uneasy. It was almost as if the Moroccan knew he was being watched. Was it them? Was it the Algerians? Had there been a slip somewhere? Ops like this were risky and hugely prone to compromise. You could never be sure what was what. Tom said, “Reuven?”
“Your op,” the Israeli said. “Your call.”
Tom chewed his upper lip for several seconds, watching Hamzi. The Moroccan was talking to his crew. Then he turned away and looked into the darkness, staring straight into Tom’s eyes once again. Tom almost dropped the camera onto his lap. “We move, Reuven.”
5:55:14 P.M. Tom slapped the Israeli’s shoulder. “Go.”
Reuven turned the ignition key, eased the truck off the curb, drove fifty feet, and without signaling made a quick right turn into a narrow passageway heading south. Once they were out of sight of rue du Congo, the Israeli floored the truck and sped eighty yards to where the passageway spilled into a narrow, crooked street that ran east to west. Before Reuven had started the engine, Tom had already collapsed the tripod. Once the truck was moving, he ripped the sniper screen down and stuffed it, along with the tripod, camera, NV, and binoculars, into a black canvas satchel.