“Saved,” Lia said in French, standing up with a pile of paper towels and holding them out toward the woman. “Where is the garbage?”
“Here, come with me,” said the librarian.
“You have to connect the cables,” Lia whispered to Dean.
“Cables?”
“So the drive works. They just plug right in. Get at least two screws in. Ask the Art Room if you need help. Go.”
Lia followed the woman to the ladies’ room. The librarian thanked her — then asked what she thought of the helpful American.
“Very… helpful,” said Lia. She tried to stall, but the librarian turned quickly to go back.
A bell began to ring.
“Closing,” said the librarian. “You have it back? Very good.”
“Closing,” said Dean, standing back. “I think we saved it. Maybe — is there a good place to eat?” he asked the librarian. “In town around here?”
The librarian frowned as if thinking, then named two or three restaurants. Dean asked if she could give him directions.
“I could take you there,” offered the librarian.
“Would you really?”
“Dean couldn’t get the power plug to go in before she came out,” Farlekas told Lia from the Art Room. “You’re going to have to get it working.”
Lia stifled a curse and told Dean in what seemed like rusty English that she hoped all Americans were like him.
“You’ll have to go back,” said Farlekas.
“Oui,” muttered Lia, heading toward the door.
“How’d she know I was American?” Dean asked the librarian as the woman shut down the rest of the machines and began locking up.
55
It was a little past 11:00 a.m. when Rubens returned to Crypto City from his meeting at the White House. He went directly to the Art Room, where Tommy Karr was just checking in from Paris.
“You’re not making any jokes,” said Rubens when Karr finished updating him.
“No? Maybe I’m tired,” said Karr.
“Understandable. We haven’t been able to locate the priest?”
Rubens looked at Rockman for the answer, but Karr supplied it.
“The Art Room has been checking. He did a mass this morning and was at some sort of counseling thing this afternoon. I’ll be at the church first thing in the morning.”
“You’re sure Vefoures had another account?” said Rubens.
“I don’t think LaFoote made it up.”
“Very well. Go there first thing. We’ve prepared a report for the French Interior Ministry on some of what we know,” added Rubens. “On the President’s orders.”
“Is it going to Ponclare, too?” Karr’s animosity was obvious.
“That will be their call,” said Rubens.
“Ponclare’s the guy that screwed LaFoote,” said Karr. “He may be a traitor. He may even have killed the old man.”
“You don’t usually jump to conclusions, Tommy.”
“I’m not saying he’s a traitor, just that we ought to be careful.”
“We always endeavor to be careful.”
Tommy laughed, it wasn’t his usual hearty roar.
56
The restaurant the librarian recommended turned out to be right down the street. It also, not coincidentally, happened to be the one to which she was going. Since the hour was early — the French rarely ate before seven — she suggested a drink at the bar.
“Stall for as long as you can,” Farlekas told Dean. “Lia’s just getting into the library now.”
It wasn’t exactly the most difficult order he’d ever had to follow. The woman’s English was very good, and the wine wasn’t all that bad, either. She asked him about America; he told her about California and asked about France.
The woman seemed to suddenly realize that she hadn’t told him her name. “Marie,” she said, holding her hand out across the table. Dean shook the hand, its warmth tickling him for just a moment.
He thought of Lia and felt guilty, as if he were cheating on her somehow. The drinks turned into a light dinner. The woman ended up walking him to the Metro line two blocks away. They exchanged e-mail addresses — and a pair of kisses. The woman watched as Dean bought a ticket and went down to the platform.
Lia was standing there, arms folded. She didn’t acknowledge him.
“Excuse me, mademoiselle,” he said, walking up over to her. “Didn’t we meet in the library?”
Lia gave him a death-wish glare.
“Sorry, guess I was wrong,” said Dean. The train came in, its rumble light because of the rubber wheels the metro used. Dean got into the car, expecting Lia to follow, but she didn’t.
“She’s getting the car. She’s OK,” said the Art Room when he checked what was going on. “She’s got the drive and is going to take it directly to the airport. We have a plane standing by.”
He went back to the hotel and sat on one of the plush couches in the ornate lobby, staring up at the mirrored ceiling. It was more than an hour later when Lia arrived. She didn’t acknowledge him, walking briskly past the doorman to the elevators at the side. Dean waited for a second and then got up to follow, entering the elevator just as the doors closed.
“Thanks for holding the door,” he said.
“You made it”
“Look, I know—”
“What do you know, Charlie Dean? What do you know?”
“I don’t see why you’re mad at me.”
Her face flushed. The elevator stopped at the second floor and two people got in, standing between them. Lia turned around, as if interested in the next day’s forecast, which was posted on a small piece of paper at the back of the elevator car.
He wanted to tell her he loved her, but there was no way he could speak. They went to their separate rooms, Dean so angry with himself that he forgot to scan the room first with the personal computer. He flipped on the television, sat back on the bed, then remembered that he had to check the room for bugs.
He had just turned on the PDA when someone knocked on the door. He jerked around, surprised.
“Oui?” he said, pulling out his pistol. “Yes?”
“I’m going for a walk,” said Lia.
Dean stared at the door for a moment, then looked down at the gun in his hand.
“Yeah, so am I,” he told her, stuffing the gun back beneath his shirt and grabbing his jacket.
They waited for the elevator silently. Inside the car, Dean hit the stop button.
“You’re going to set off an alarm,” said Lia as the car paused between floors. Her lip trembled.
“Look, I don’t know what happened to you in Korea. I know you got beat up. I’m sorry. But I love you. I do love you.” The words were choking, but he forced himself to continue. “Look, I’m not good at this. I get, whatever, tongue-tied. But I do love you. And if I can do something to help you, I will. Just let me.”
Lia’s eyes had puffed up and he could tell she was fighting back tears. He pulled her toward him, but she was stiff in his arms, still distant.
It’s not like it is in the movies, he thought. I can’t make it better just because I wish it were.
57
After he finished talking to Rubens, Karr went up to Montmarte to see the second cousin LaFoote had stayed with in Paris. It turned out to be a waste of time; the cousin wasn’t around and there was no way to let himself into the small street-level apartment without being seen. He went over and asked one of the nosier neighbors watching him from a nearby window if he knew where the man had gone; the woman answered civilly but curtly, telling him that Monsieur Terre’s uncle had died and he was most likely with the family.
“You see anybody else poking around?” Karr asked the woman in French.
“Tâtonner?” she answered, repeating the infinitive form of the verb poke.
Karr held his hands out and apologized for his poor French, first in French and then in English, claiming to be a Canadian from Montreal who knew the older Monsieu
r LaFoote and had hoped to find him with his second cousin. That got her to lighten up just a little, and she told him that Monsieur Terre kept mostly to himself, except for his very nice uncle — the age difference made him seem more an uncle than a cousin. It was the same uncle, LaFoote, who now was gone, to everyone’s great sorrow.
Tommy thanked her and borrowed a piece of paper to leave a note. He scribbled something and then went over to the cousin’s front door, slipping it into the crack — then placing a set of bugging devices on the sill so the Art Room would know if the place was broken into.
Tommy went back to the embassy to use the phones and see if any of the local intelligence guys had anything useful. After a few fruitless attempts to locate the priest, Tommy decided he would take a break and called Deidre. He got her answering machine and on the spur of the moment told her he’d be at the bar of the Ritz on the Champs Elysées at eleven if she wanted to have a drink. Karr had never been to the Ritz and didn’t actually know for a fact that the famous hotel had a bar. But what the hey.
Then he called the sister of LaFoote’s friend Vefoures, whom LaFoote had spoken to the other day in the car via cell phone.
“I’m a friend of Monsieur LaFoote,” he told her in French when she picked up. “I’m afraid I have bad news. Very bad news.”
When the woman didn’t answer, Karr told her that LaFoote had died and the police were investigating. When he finished, the woman asked what sort of friend he was.
“A new one,” said Karr, laughing — but only for a moment. “I admired Monsieur LaFoote very much. We were working together on something. I’d like to ask you some questions about it. And about your brother.”
“I don’t know much,” she said. And before Karr could say anything else she burst out crying. Her wails continued for quite a while; finally she hung the phone up without saying anything else. Karr decided the best thing to do was let her be.
* * *
Shortly before nine, Karr went over to Gare du Nord, the train station where he was supposed to meet LaFoote. He took two Marines from the embassy detail with him in plainclothes, hoping that whoever had killed the old French agent would be looking for him. But if someone was, neither Karr nor the Marines could spot the person. The Art Room grumbled about the lousy French video system, which covered only a small portion of the station, but even before the train from Aux Boix came in it was clear to Karr that the station wasn’t being watched.
The Marines liked the cloak-and-dagger stuff well enough to suggest he join them for a drink when they went off-duty. He took a rain check, heading back to the embassy to see how the French had reacted to the Desk Three briefing on the Eiffel Tower threat.
The reaction could be summed up in one word: Impossible!
Despite the detailed brief Desk Three had prepared, despite the high-level contacts and the comprehensive information, the French simply didn’t believe that the threat was anything more than American imagination run amok. Plots against the Eiffel Tower were very popular among crack-pots and terrorist wannabes, but no serious campaign against the tower had ever been undertaken. And besides, as far as the French were concerned, Middle Eastern terrorists had no beef with them — France was a vigorous defender of Arab rights. Yes, there might be some dissension of late as the French moved to work more closely with their American allies, but why would anyone want to destroy the Eiffel Tower?
Karr couldn’t really blame the French for not taking the threat seriously. He didn’t see all of the connections himself. Johnny Bib’s team had developed a theory that a car thief named Mussa Duoar had been working on a plan to topple the Eiffel Tower with a massive bomb blast at the base of the monument. Duoar seemed an unlikely terrorist: the man made a tidy living selling stolen automobiles, a fact that everyone in France except for the police seemed to know. More than likely the police did know it but had been paid to keep quiet; in any event, Duoar had escaped prosecution even though he had been investigated several times. Perhaps it helped that many of his cars seemed to have been stolen in Germany and England and then transported to France; few Frenchmen were the actual victims of his crimes.
Even with the lightweight high-yield explosive Vefoures had been working on, the analysts calculated that it would take a medium-sized bus to carry what was needed to destroy one of the four legs of the tower. That was a lot of explosives.
However, some of the materials needed to make the explosive had been purchased by a dummy corporation Duoar used in his stolen-car ring.
The CIA and State Department intelligence people at the embassy were divided about how real the threat was. Karr listened to them debate and tried to remain neutral, despite their prodding. Finally he just got up and left the embassy, walking out of the grounds and down the Champs Elysées toward the Ritz. He checked in with the Art Room as he walked.
“Nothing new,” said Telach. “You’d better get to bed.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
He turned off the communications system before she could protest.
58
It was the most beautiful paint job Mussa Duoar had ever seen. The blue swept toward the front of the truck, a wave of the ocean captured on the steel. Above it, the yellow swirl brightened the dark interior of the garage; it was as if the truck glowed with an intense fire.
Appropriate, thought Mussa.
It was all moving together now, his many strings pulled from their different directions. Four men came around to the back of his pickup truck and took the heavy cart from the back. Mussa’s heart jumped as they nearly dropped it onto the concrete — it was protected against accidental shocks and there was no way for it to detonate accidentally, but even so…
They walked the box to the back of the van. The box was twice as heavy as the case it was dummied up to look like. But except for the wheels, which were slightly bigger (and considerably sturdier) than the wheels on the cart it was replacing, the difference would not be noticeable to anyone who didn’t try to push it.
Or open it.
“Careful, please,” Mussa said, following along behind the case. “Careful now. This has traveled a long way over many months.”
The men slid it into the specially prepared compartment at the back of the van. Mussa once again felt his heart thump as one of the carriers lost his grip. But the others held the case firmly, and it was soon in the back of the truck. Five other carts, these a bit lighter than the first but still a hundred or so pounds heavier than the carts they were to replace, were loaded in behind it. Mussa examined the vehicle as the rear door was closed and locked. The heavy-duty shocks and suspension kept it from sagging; it, too, looked like the genuine article.
Very good. Very, very good.
“Listen, all of you,” he said loudly. “Gather around — I appreciate your work.”
He set down the satchel he’d carried in, bending to unlatch it. Just as his fingers touched the clasp he stopped and straightened.
“Anyone smell gas?” he asked. “Natural gas? Is the line off?”
The workers looked around at one another. There was a gas line to the garage, but it was used exclusively for the heaters and hadn’t been turned on for the winter season yet.
“Call the boiler people to check it,” he told one of the workers. “Call now. Get them to come.”
The man looked at Mussa as if he were crazy. It was nearly midnight.
“Perhaps I am being overly cautious, but I am always concerned about your welfare,” said Mussa. “Well, make the call so you can all celebrate. Go ahead. Please. Put my nervous mind to rest.”
He waited until the man had picked up the phone to bend back to the satchel.
“I promised extra consideration,” Mussa said. “And I think you’ll find I am as good as my word. Sommes” he added, calling over the foreman. “You divide this up as you see fit.”
The satchel was filled with American twenty-dollar bills. They were counterfeit but good enough to fool these men and probably many others. Sommes took the satc
hel and began counting as the others gathered around.
Mussa went to the truck and started it up. He rolled down the window and called to the guards who were just outside. “Come. Get your bonuses. It’s all right. Don’t be left out. You deserve a reward as well. God bless you all.”
The two men looked at each other and then trotted inside. Mussa took his foot off the brake, easing down the slight curb from the building into the driveway. Outside, he watched for a moment in his rearview mirror, making sure that no one had left the building. When he had gone about one hundred meters, he reached into his jacket pocket and pressed the button on a small radio-controlled device, igniting the explosives he had planted beneath the floor before the project began.
59
“Does he have many good days?” asked the doctor.
“Every so often,” said Rubens. He told himself it wasn’t a lie — though it did beg the question of what a good day actually was.
The doctor nodded grimly.
“He’s a genius of a man,” Rubens said.
“Yes, I’m sure he was.”
The past tense stung Rubens, but he couldn’t really argue with it. The doctor glanced at the General’s court-appointed attorney standing nearby and then continued the examination. The man called himself a gerontologist; it sounded like one of those baloney specialties, but apparently he was a medical doctor, since his card had “MD” after his name.
In Rubens’ opinion, the examination was perfunctory at best. The doctor listened to the General’s heart, looked at his eyes, asked him to cough, examined his ears, then read his medical chart for a second time. When he was finished, he sat down on the bed next to the General and asked how he was feeling.
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