“It’s also possible he gave Sherlock the slip,” said Karr.
“Should I have him knock on the door?”
Karr thought about this for a moment. He didn’t want LaFoote to think he didn’t trust him. If he was home and wasn’t answering the phone, obviously he’d draw that conclusion, no matter how the CIA officer tried to cover his appearance at the door.
And if he’d slipped away?
Well, good for the old codger then. Sending the CIA agent to play vacuum-cleaner salesman wasn’t going to help.
“Nah. Just have him hang out. I’ll check back later.”
Karr caught some coffee — the French seemed to insist on far too much milk — then paid a visit to some of his CIA friends to get their opinions of Ponclare and his department.
Overworked and underpaid.
Which made the fact that he had a very nice apartment in the Marais area of Paris — the ultra-chic section, not the old Jewish quarter — more than a little interesting.
Karr did a little more checking. Ponclare’s family had once been very well off but had lost nearly everything by the time of World War II; the war finished off whatever small assets they had. As Rockman had told him, Ponclare’s father had been a renowned French citizen, honors all around — but few francs in the bank, or at least so it seemed. Ponclare more or less had followed in his father’s footsteps.
But over the last four or five years — since coming to Paris — Ponclare had managed not only to buy the expensive apartment but also to repurchase two of the family’s estates. The French themselves had been interested in this, according to a rumor the CIA hands told Karr, but it wasn’t clear if there had been a formal investigation.
The Desk Three op then ventured over to the Marais area to look up a retired American intelligence officer who had known Ponclare’s father, but the retiree added little beyond the press clippings Karr had already seen. When LaFoote still didn’t answer his phone, Karr decided to get an early lunch. Coincidentally, he happened to be only a few blocks from the Picasso museum. Karr swung over in that direction and arrived outside the walls just as Deidre herself was arriving.
“Fancy meeting you here,” he told her.
“What a coincidence,” she said, kissing him on the cheek.
Karr tried taking the kiss in stride, though he felt himself blush.
They went inside the stone courtyard, Deidre explaining the history of the building as they walked toward the entrance. The collector of the salt tax had built it with money he’d skimmed from the tax, she said; unfortunately, the King figured out what was going on and the property was soon sold to pay for what he’d skimmed. Penniless and out of a job, the salt collector lived the rest of his life around the corner as a janitor.
“‘There’s a more complicated version,” said Deidre. “But that gets the highlights.”
Inside, Karr found that there was an advantage to walking around an art museum with an art student: Deidre had interesting stories to go with each painting. Karr had never exactly been an art lover and wasn’t one when they left the building an hour later — but he was definitely in love with Deidre.
Or at least, very serious like.
He led Deidre to a nice and inexpensive café a few blocks away that she claimed not to know. He excused himself and hit the men’s room, first trying LaFoote — no answer — and then connecting with the Art Room.
“We have nothing new for you,” Telach told him.
“I keep trying to get ahold of LaFoote, but there’s no answer,” said Karr. “What’s our spook say?”
“Hasn’t seen anything.”
“Maybe I’ll just shoot out there after lunch,” said Karr. He actually doubted that LaFoote was there, but it would give him a chance to look over the town — and maybe see who the priest was whom he trusted. “Unless you have something else.”
“No, I was going to suggest that myself.”
“What’s up with Charlie and Lia?”
“They’re in Paris resting.”
“Yeah?”
“‘They just got in. I told them to sleep. So how’s Deidre?”
“Jeez, Marie, you sound like my mom.”
“Just making conversation,” said the Art Room supervisor. “Word is, I’m going to have to read you directive one-oh-three-seventeen-b soon.”
“I’m guessing that’s about fraternization with ambassadors’ daughters.” Karr laughed. “Did you make that up, or is that a real directive?”
“It may be real by the time you get back, Tommy. Check in when you’re on the train.”
50
“The Eiffel Tower in meters.”
Rubens looked at the number on the small bundle of papers that Johnny Bib and his assistant Tristan Young had brought with them to his office. He had no doubt that Johnny Bib was correct — Johnny was never wrong about a number — but was it significant?
“As you can see on the next page,” continued Johnny, “it is part of a formula regarding the integrity of the structure — and, by implication, how to bring it down.”
Rubens flipped over to the next page as Johnny Bib continued, launching into a discussion of cosines and engineering formulas that Rubens couldn’t decipher. The page he was looking at showed a series of hexadecimal numbers captured from the hard drive of a computer, the remains of a file that had been erased and partially filled with other data. The file had been deleted and then overwritten, but NSA analysts had extracted some of its remains — they were outlined by yellow highlighter — and supplied the missing contents.
Or what they thought were the missing contents. More than 50 percent of the file was gone.
The computer was located in a French library and had apparently been “hijacked” for use, the idea being to eliminate the possibility that any incriminating evidence would be found on a local hard drive. It was an elaborate precaution but not one without its own risks, as the computers targeted could not be secured.
“What’s on the rest of the drive?” Rubens asked.
“That’s my point. My point!” said Johnny Bib. “There are files we can’t access. We need the physical drive.”
Rubens glanced at Tristan. He had an embarrassed, almost guilty look on his face. Whether that was good or bad Rubens couldn’t decide.
“Why can’t we access the rest of the files?” Rubens asked Tristan. “Is it encrypted?”
“No, sir. Physical errors. There are problems with the drive. Part of it is locked off by the control program that runs at boot-up and we can’t access it without catching it just as it boots. And they boot it physically, then connect to the drive. So we pretty much have to be there when it comes up, heh.”
“You can’t override the control program?” asked Rubens. “Delete it and restore it?”
“I can’t without it being obvious that something’s going on,” said Tristan. “We’re not one hundred percent sure we won’t end up corrupting the drive worse. Physically having the drive is really the way to go here.”
“The drive is a sixty-gigabyte drive,” said Johnny Bib. “Only forty-three-point-three-six-seven-eight gigabytes are available. If we have it, worst-case scenario, even if it’s written over, we can examine the flux and reconstruct it.”
Rubens rubbed his forehead. The technique Johnny Bib referred to was a process that got around so-called “scrubber” or “shredding” programs, which overwrote data with specific patterns to obscure it. The technique depended on a series of high-powered electronic microscopes to physically examine the magnetic traces left as data was recorded and rerecorded. It was an extremely powerful if somewhat esoteric technique — and also expensive and time-consuming.
“You’re sure that there’s something there?” said Rubens.
“Not until we see it,” said Tristan. “But the error log noted that the problem occurred at the same date and time the file was first overwritten — they mirror the directory and logs to another computer, where we, heh, found it.”
“You’re sure this malfun
ction isn’t part of whatever hijacking program they installed?” asked Rubens.
“It’s not part of the program,” said Tristan. “But that is a possibility.”
“If it is, it’s a type we haven’t seen,” said Johnny Bib. “Which would be another reason to retrieve the disk drive.”
“If the bad sectors occurred when the area was scrubbed, they would be easy to retrieve,” said Tristan. “Kind of, heh, the reverse of what was intended.”
“Where is it?” asked Rubens.
“We’re working on the physical location now through trial and error,” said the young man. “It’s somewhere in a district that includes Paris, but there are a lot of libraries to query. We should have it within an hour, maybe a little less.”
“You’re sure there’s no one in the library who knows?” asked Rubens.
“I don’t think so,” said Young. “The whole idea of setting it up this way would be because you’re worried about a physical search of your premises. And besides, the computer that led us here was in a dentist’s office. It seems to have been used by a stolen car ring. First, we started looking at the patterns of when the computer was accessed—”
Rubens put up his hand. “I’m sure I would admire your technique as well as your fortitude, Mr. Young. Well done. But candidly, it’s not relevant at the moment.”
Rubens shifted the papers on his desk and took another printout, this one summarizing the data on the CD-ROM Tommy Karr had obtained. It had information about shaping plastic explosives, apparently from a secret French initiative undertaken a few years before. The files on the CD-ROM were all several years old and did not prove that the explosive was in the hands of terrorists. Nonetheless, the pattern was coming into sharper focus.
At least for Rubens.
“Johnny, would a carload of these explosives be able to destroy the Eiffel Tower? Could this explosive be fit into the equation you reconstructed?”
Johnny Bib blinked at him but didn’t answer.
“That didn’t occur to you?” said Rubens. “You didn’t put these two things together?”
Johnny Bib blinked again.
Was it such an obvious question that the analysts had missed it?
Apparently, yes. Johnny Bib turned without saying anything and left the office.
Young blinked, unsure what to do.
“Find a similar disk drive in France and have it prepared so our ops can swap it,” Rubens told him. “And please, find the library, or wherever this computer is. Call me — no, call the Art Room. I have to leave for the White House within the hour.”
51
The trip on the train from Paris to Aux Boix took less than twenty minutes. Tommy Karr spent most of them staring out the window, thinking of Deidre. He’d never felt so distracted before, as if his mission were just a sideline job.
But of course it wasn’t, and he snapped back in focus with the first step onto the railroad platform. LaFoote’s house was an easy fifteen-minute stroll away; Karr made it in ten.
The CIA shadow sat in a rather conspicuous Renault at the end of the block. The CIA officer nearly jumped when Karr knocked on the window.
“He’s still inside, huh?” asked Karr as he rolled down the window.
“Oh yeah.”
“You can see the back from here?”
Karr leaned over the windshield, answering his own question. He did have a view of the backyard, but with a little care it would be possible to use the hedges at the side to crawl away without being seen.
“I can see. Nobody came or went,” said the CIA officer testily.
“You do a lot of surveillance work?”
“No. He hasn’t come out. Look — there’s his car, right?”
“You sat here the whole time?”
“Of course. You just wanted him protected, right? Without knowing I was here. And no police, no DST, nobody.”
“Yeah,” said Karr.
“So?”
There were good CIA people, Karr thought to himself, plenty of them. But clearly this wasn’t one.
“Can I go home now?” asked the CIA officer. “I haven’t had any sleep.”
“Hang out for just a little while longer,” Karr said. “You talking to my people?”
“On a sat phone.”
“Good.”
Karr straightened, then strolled down toward LaFoote’s house. As he suspected, there was no answer when he knocked at the front door. He looked in the window, saw nothing, then ducked around the side, looking for a back door.
“Looks like LaFoote ducked our CIA rental,” Karr told Rockman.
“Figures,” answered the runner.
There was no back door. Karr glanced through one of the windows, debating whether to go inside and search the house before LaFoote got back.
His hesitation vanished when he peeked through the window of what looked like a study and saw that papers were scattered on the floor of LaFoote’s living room.
“I’m going inside,” Karr told Rockman. “Make sure our lookout stays awake.”
“What’s up?”
“I don’t know yet. But either the old guy is a lousy housekeeper or he’s had guests.”
Karr used his handheld computer to scan for a burglar alarm or booby trap, then opened the window and let himself in. The papers on the floor were franc notes, and there was an empty strongbox nearby.
He found LaFoote inside the bedroom, a grotesque look on his face. Even though he knew LaFoote was dead, Karr checked for a pulse. The body was on the cold side.
“Sucks,” he said aloud.
“You want Knox to come inside?” prompted the Art Room supervisor, Chris Farlekas. Farlekas had just come on to spell Telach. “Your CIA guy?”
“Better keep him where he is or I may strangle him,” said Karr, who for once in his life wasn’t kidding. He corralled his anger and began searching the house for the other CDs.
“You have somebody coming up the walk toward the front door,” warned Rockman about five minutes later.
“All right, thanks. I’ll stay out of the front rooms. Tell Knox to warn me if he goes around the side.”
Where would the old man keep the disks? As a veteran spy, he surely knew all the best hiding places — but he would also realize that all of the best spots could be found. Karr looked around the room, remembering LaFoote going through his friend’s house. The walls were all plasterboard, completely intact and the paint years old. If the disks had been hidden in the strongbox they were gone.
The doorbell rang. Karr kept looking.
“Tommy, we just checked on the license plate,” said Rockman. “That’s a relative, same name, one of the nephews or something. Knox thinks he may have a key, because he’s reaching into his pocket”
Karr looked around the room. The best place to leave CDs would be with other CDs. Since LaFoote didn’t have a computer of his own, Karr looked for a stereo. But LaFoote didn’t seem to have one of those, either. The op went back to the bedroom and bent to the mattress, sliding his hand underneath — he found a thin knife but no CDs.
LaFoote’s lifeless eyes stared at him as he walked over to the bureau.
Nothing. He went back out into the living room, checking the bookcase. Nothing.
He walked into the kitchen, opened the oven on a hunch.
“Tommy, you have to get out of there,” said Farlekas.
The door at the front of the house opened.
The oven was empty as well. Karr turned, then saw the large brown envelope on the counter, as if waiting to be mailed. It was addressed to a Father Brossard.
“Good thinking,” said Karr, grabbing it.
“Denis?” said a male voice at the front of the house. “Denis? Qu‘est-ce-que c’est?” The man started toward LaFoote’s bedroom.
“Tommy!” Farlekas practically shouted.
“I’m out of here,” he said, pulling himself out the window.
52
The national security adviser rubbed his hand acro
ss his forehead, as if he were trying to manipulate some part of his brain through the skin and skull. Then he leaned across the long table in the White House situation room, his voice reverberating against the paneled walls of the nearly empty conference room.
“What do we know for sure here?” Hadash asked Rubens. “You have a lot of guesses strung together.”
“I agree,” said Rubens. “But the information is provocative. I’ m told that the stolen-car ring is run by a man named Mussa Duoar, who was born in Algeria. He’s a Muslim, and apparently not a French citizen although he’s lived in the country for at least ten years, if not more.”
“Why isn’t he a citizen?” asked President Marcke.
“I don’t know,” said Rubens. “Possibly a matter of choice. The family name seems to come up in connection with the Algerian independence movement in the nineteen-sixties, but you could probably say that about half the population.”
Marcke nodded. Though only Hadash, Rubens, Vice Admiral Brown, the President, and CIA Director Jake Namath were at the meeting, it was being held in the large room beneath the White House to facilitate easy communications with the Secretary of State, who had already left for Paris ahead of the President’s scheduled visit. The Secretary of State’s worried image filled a video screen nearby.
“The target would fit with other intercepts from the Middle East as a very high-value symbol,” said Rubens. “This would be a grand slam for them, the equivalent in France of the World Trade Center. The impact in Europe would be immense. Immeasurable. And it makes sense given Arab and Muslim reaction to France’s increased cooperation with the U.S. on security matters following their embarrassment over Iraq. They’ve been burning French flags in Egypt and Palestine for the past eight months. They’ll go crazy with this.”
“But how credible is the information?” asked Namath. “We’re always getting this sort of background chatter.”
“I think this goes beyond background chatter” said Rubens. “There are gaps, certainly, but these things don’t present themselves as complete pictures.”
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