Shit—there were headlights to port. I slalomed, I fishtailed, and somehow they missed me. More cars coming—starboard—I swerved, spun out, and then the wheels found enough traction on the wet pavement to crawl straight ahead.
It was time to check my six again. Shit—both fucking cars had stayed with me. Just ahead, three streets curved away like the tines of a pitchfork. Directly opposite—the middle tine—was a wall of headlights. To my left, I could make out the low wall of the Passy cemetery. No good—that would take me back the way I’d just come. That left the right tine. There was no visible traffic, so I steered to starboard—until the driver started pulling on my arm, trying to reverse the steering wheel, all the while screaming, “Pas la droite, pas la droite—sens unique, sens unique,” and pounding on the dashboard with his free fist.
You know how it is with foreign languages—if you’re not absolutely bilingual, you think in your native tongue, then you translate, and finally, you speak. That was precisely what was happening here. I’d learned the idiom sens unique during my language training as a young SEAL lieutenant commander. Sens is French for sense— as in avoir le sens de l’orientation, to have a good sense of direction (which, obviously, I do). But sens can also mean direction, or way, as in (this is coming back to me now) sens unique— one-way traffic.
Message translated and understood. Now, friends, the essence of SpecWar is converting apparent disaster into victory. Like right now. I mean, I’d had enough of Mr. Murphy for the moment. Moment, hell—I’d had enough of the sucker for a lifetime. So instead of turning away, I headed straight for the “tine” the driver had just warned me about. Now I did check in my rearview mirror. The two chase cars were following. Good. I had ’em precisely where I wanted ’em.
Straight ahead was a wall of oncoming traffic. I downshifted into first, floored the Peugeot, and got maybe twentyeight or twenty-nine miles an hour out of it. Not what I needed, but it would have to do—and I’d be helped by the slick, wet pavement.
Closing distance between me and the oncoming traffic was now about two hundred meters, and there was a lot of honking coming and flashing of headlights directed at me. Time to get moving: I reached down and yanked the emergency brake as hard as I could. The taxi’s rear wheels locked. The driver crossed himself, rolled backwards over the front seat, and went full fetal just as the vehicle began to skid forward. I turned the steering wheel slightly to the left. Now the taxi was being carried along by a momentum that is roughly equal to the Rogue Warrior’s Second Law of Physics, which reads, “If you grasp firmly by the short hairs and pull, the rest of the body will follow.” In this case, the weight of the taxi and its momentum combined with the controlled skid to turn the vehicle 180 degrees in just about twice its own length. When we hit 180, I straightened the wheel, released the emergency brake, and floored the accelerator just as the mass of oncoming traffic caught up with me.
What I’d performed is called a bootlegger’s turn. It is effective and efficient if you’ve practiced the technique enough to be able to do it without hesitation. Starting in the days when I commanded Red Cell, I made a regular habit of taking my men out to BSR—that’s Bill Scott Raceway—in West Virginia for ten days at a time, thrice a year, running the tires off Bill’s cars as we practiced J-turns, bootlegger’s turns, high-speed chase maneuvers, and running roadblocks. I was delighted to see that I hadn’t lost the edge that saturation training gives operators.
As we drove off, the driver’s big nose and fingers came over the top of the front seat making him resemble a Gallic Kilroy. He saw we were alive. He patted my shoulder and said, “I’m happy, monsieur,” and then he fainted dead away.
I was even happier than he—because I’d finally fucked the fucking fuckers who’d been chasing me. They were caught unprepared by a tidal wave of nasty Parisian traffic. I caught the crest of that wave—and my creeping-crawling taxi surfed merrily past Ehud the Hood and his pals. No way could they follow me now. I left them—and Monsieur Murphy, too, I hoped—in my wake.
There was a message for Captain H. Snerd, USA, Ret., at the front desk. I slit the envelope open. Inside was one of the Cercle des Armées note cards they provide at the writing desks in the foyer, with English notation in clumsy block letters. “Come directly across the street, Dickhead,” is what it said.
The only directly across the street I could think of was the Café Augustin. Which is where I went. Directly.
Monsieur Henri was working the bar. He bid me a warm but s-l-o-w welcome, then pointed me toward the narrow stairway between the kitchen and the pantry that led up to the LeClercs’ first-floor apartment.
As I climbed the creaky steps I heard him on the intercom announcing my arrival. Madame Colette greeted me at the top, an etched crystal glass of what had to be Bombay Sapphire on the rocks in her hand. “Welcome, Petit Richard,” she said, beaming like a Jewish mother at her only son’s med school graduation. “We’ve been waiting for you.”
Oh, have we, now? I took a peck on each cheek, returned the favor, clasped the glass in my paw, and followed her into the salon, which is how they refer to the living room in France. Avi Ben Gal, legs crossed, was settled comfortably in the overstuffed sofa, a cup of coffee balanced on his knee. And sitting next to him, his red hair all askew from travel, his jug ears sticking out like mug handles, a frosty bottle of Heineken in his ugly fist, sat the ex-Marine I call Stevie Wonder, even though his real name resembles neither.
Wonder set the beer down and pulled himself to his size elevens. “Bone swar, mon-sewer Dickhead,” he said, proving one more once that language isn’t his forte but great timing is.
“Fuck you, you worthless cockbreath,” I said, wrapping him around the shoulders in as tight a bear hug as I could muster. I can tell you honestly, gentle readers, that I probably have never been so happy to see anyone in my life.
“Nobody knows I’m here,” Wonder explained, resuming his seat and taking a long pull on the beer. “I had fifteen days of leave coming, so I took ’em. Anything to get out of studying for the damn chiefs exam.”
I’d forgotten he was supposed to take the chief petty officer’s written exam—and about fucking time. He’d been a first class too damn long. Today’s Navy needs chiefs like Wonder—old-fashioned Warrior chiefs—even though today’s Navy doesn’t always know it.
“So anyway,” Wonder continued, “I decided to bag the studying. I knew where you were. I have a fuckin’ passport, and a credit card y’know—and …”
I knew. I knew. And despite the fact that I chewed the prodige rouge out for missing the chance to make chief this cycle, having him here was like being handed back my life. As you already know, friends, I had not been entirely happy about making this trip by myself. I am a Team guy—always have been. I like my team close by. Not necessarily physically close all the time—but around. I work better that way.
Yes, Avi and I had agreed to work together—as you already know we’d worked well together in the past. And it wasn’t that I didn’t trust Avi. But while he and I may have had similar missions, and a symbiotic operational relationship, we were working for hugely different national interests and organizations. Wonder’s presence meant that I had someone whose whole raison d’être was the same as mine—he was U.S. Navy all the way. Not to mention he was an asshole with whom I’d operated for so long that we almost never had to verbalize during times of, ah, stress. I knew where he’d be. He knew the same about me. It makes things a helluva lot easier when the merde hits the old ventilateur.
“I know you two lovebirds have a lot to talk about,” Avi Ben Gal interrupted Wonder’s monologue and my musing, “but we have a situation here that has to be dealt with before it turns more nasty than it already is.” He set his coffee cup on the adjacent table, “Those b’nai zonim on our tails were Mossad gumshoes—I caught a glimpse of one pair before I lost ’em and I knew them both. One is a Soviet-affairs type from headquarters. The other was Ehud Golan’s deputy when Ehud ran networks in Lebanon
. Which means the fucking chief of station here set me up. Obviously, he’s got some kind of operation going on, and he thinks I’m going to horn in.”
It struck me that for an experienced operator. Avi was being naive. Well, maybe that’s to be expected: it’s hard to think of your own people as potential bad guys. “Maybe he has.” I said. “But I can’t discount the possibility that he’s dirty and he’s doing this because he’s being paid. It’s happened before.”
“Oh. c’mon. Dick—this is a chief of station we’re talking about, not some damn asset with his hand in your pocket.”
It was time for a wake-up call. I’ve read the fucking NSA intercepts and I know Mossad has had its problems. “Hey, fuck you, Avi. I love you, but get real. Remember that Mossad asshole in Belgium? He stole fifty thousand dollars worth of gold Krugerrands the agency had earmarked to pay its NOCs—nonofficial cover officers. What about the COS in Washington—the one operating under the nom de guerre of Cohen. He was yanked back last year because he fudged what, thirty, maybe forty grand in expenses. And that’s just the penny-ante cook-the-books stuff. In ninety-one, ninety-two, they discovered three KGB moles buried at headquarters. And Lantos has real money to spend. So whether the guy’s dirty, or whether he’s just stupid, it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that we have to move—and fast. The fucking clock’s ticking, Avi. There’s no time for navel-gazing right now.”
The look on his face told me he realized I was right. Still, I knew how much the sorts of dishonesty I’d brought up offended Avi. He was one of those guys who spend their own money on the job, and then take a second or third loan from the bank to pay their mortgages.
My tone softened. “Hey, hey—not everybody’s a Boy Scout like you.”
He looked over at me as if he’d just remembered something important. “Hey, you know who calls me that?”
“Calls you what?”
“Boy Scout. Ehud does. Always has. Like it’s an insult.” Avi paused. His eyes lit up. “And I forgot,” he said.
“Forgot what?”
“I was over on Avenue Marceau, checking things out at the cultural center. One of the tourist staff told me Ehud had come by a couple of times in the past week. Shown up out of the blue. Some coincidence, right?”
Oh, yeah. You people know how much I believe in coincidences when they are job related.
“Avi, whatever Mossad is doing right now is suspect, so far as I’m concerned. But it’s not because the chief of station is having you tailed. It’s because Ehud Golan is really behind this op—you know it and I know it.”
“How do you know it?”
“He was the sonofabitch running the crew on my six tonight—and in my case they weren’t just watching, either. Old Ehud wanted to haul my ass in for questioning.” I sipped my Bombay and set the glass down. “I’ve seen his interrogations, Avi. No fun.”
My friends, before we progress any further, it is probably time for a little recapitulation. Does anything about Avi’s and my most recent escapade sound familiar to you?
You say you’re thinking? Okay—concentrate. Think back to the time in Moscow when Bart Wyeth summoned me to the embassy first thing in the morning. Remember? He left all those messages the night I was out banging myself up at Andrei Yudin’s dacha. So, the next morning, bright and early, I showed up at the embassy.
And guess what? As I left AMEMB Moscow, I was picked up and shadowed by that lamentable trio of Ivans, Vynkenski, Blynkenski, and Nodyev, who ran my ass ragged all over Moscow before I shook ’em off.
Now, it has never occurred to me until this moment to ask how the hell Vynkenski, Blynkenski, and Nodyev knew precisely where I would be at 0700 in the morning. Obviously, somebody had clued ’em as to my whereabouts. And who might have done that?
Well, frankly, the name Bart Wyeth, deputy chief of mission, comes to mind.
And how did the information get passed from Bart to Andrei’s goons? Well, Bart’s old pal Werner Lantos sure sits somewhere near the top of my list of suspects.
Now, here we are in gay Paree. Avi Ben Gal gets a call from the embassy’s chief spook to show up. When he does, he’s followed by a bunch of Israeli hoods, including Ehud Golan, as soon as he leaves the embassy.
Item: In Moscow, Werner Lantos gets information about me from the U.S. Embassy.
Item: In Paris, Ehud Golan gets information about Avi from the Israeli Embassy.
Item: Werner works for Christians In Action.
Item: Ehud is a Mossad boy.
Happenstance? Coincidence? Well, it all looks as parallel as goddamn Lionel train tracks to me, friends. What do you think?
Precisely. You think it’s time to stop talking and start acting. I do, too.
First, I got on the horn to Ken Ross. No, I didn’t call the Pentagon. Those numbers are all in the computerprogrammed surveillance equipment on the B-4 level at NSA headquarters at Fort Meade, Maryland.
Instead, I called Rogue Manor. The phone rang six times. Then Brud’s West Virginia drawl answered, “Manor.”
Brud’s the ex-Camp David Marine who does security work at Rogue Manor three days a week. The other two he commutes to a classified facility in the Blue Ridge.
“Yo—it’s me. No names.” I wasted no time telling Brud what I needed in oblique terms. It didn’t have to be explained twice. I gave him the LeClercs’ number and hung up.
Six minutes later, he was back on-line. So was Kenny Ross. Why? Because Brud had initiated a conference call.
In direct but coded language I told the admiral what I needed. He whistled. “Tough,” he said.
“But possible?”
“Can do. The boss will take care of it.”
“Timetable?”
“Well, I’ll get on it now and get a message to you as soon as I can.” There was a pause on the line. “How’s it going over there?”
“It’s getting very complicated. Too many layers, too many players.” I hoped that he understood what I was saying.
“Well, just keep your head down.”
“Oh, sure—and FYVM, too.” I rang off.
Next, Avi and I each phoned the Cercle to let them know we were sending a messenger with a note to pick up something from our rooms. The LeClercs sent their aged busboy, Paulo, with two rolled-up shopping bags under his arm and a list in his pocket, shuffling off to the Cercle to make the collection. Item by item, Paulo pulled enough clothes and sundries from our rooms to allow us a couple of days without having to go back, stuffed everything in the bags, and then, as directed, plodded the long way around the Place St. Augustin—twice, which must have done wonders for his lumbago—while Avi, Wonder, and I scanned the street from behind the LeClercs’ draped and curtained windows, aided by a trio of powerful field glasses selected from among Monsieur Henri’s dozen pair of bird-watching binoculars.
From our vantage point we were able to sweep the whole Place, back and forth, up and down, side to side, as efficiently as any KGB visir station or stakan observer in Moscow ever had. And we all came to the same conclusion: no one had followed Paulo, or had him under surveillance.
Tools of the trade came next. Weapons were a no-go. Avi didn’t want to alert his people—and given the experience of the past few hours I had to agree with him. Wonder, traveling commercially and having to subject himself to the state-ofthe-art airport security at Dulles International Airport, and the possibility of a customs inspection at De Gaulle, had come sans weapons or lethal implements. Except, of course, for the Mad Dog MiniFreq composite knife he wore around his neck under his shirt. And the set of titanium lock picks that sat directly behind the American Express card in his nylon wallet. And the small, triangular-blade dagger that masquerades as his belt buckle. And the SAS survival saw (it can double handily as a garotte) with which Wonder lines his belt.
The rest of our equipment we pulled from Henri and Colette. Actually, there wasn’t much we needed. We borrowed the LeClercs’ camera with its macrozoom lens, one roll of black-and-white film, three
pairs of compact field glasses, three pairs of well-broken-in leather-palmed work gloves, a roll of tape that was as close to duct tape as one can get in Paris, un tournevis (as you recall I’d managed to lose my own screwdriver earlier), and a ten-meter length of half-inch rope. It was hemp, unfortunately. I hate hemp because it has splinters, which makes it hell to climb. I was hoping we wouldn’t have to use it.
2145 hours—a quarter to ten on the big civilian clock that hung suspended across the square above a store window. We planned our route, using one of the street maps that Monsieur Henri keeps behind the bar to help tourists find their way around the city.
As we plotted, six liters of deep, fruity Chiroubles from one of the twenty-five-liter barrels in the coolest part of the cellar found their way to the table where we worked, accompanied by Normandy cheese and country ficelles. Madame Colette wasn’t about to let us go out underfed or unfortified—and she let me know it as she fluttered around her small, efficient kitchen preparing a late supper. A two-kilo chicken was stuffed with a lemon and a bouquet of fresh herbs and tossed into a hot oven. I could hear it sizzling as it roasted. A kettleful of new, white, waxy-skinned potatoes from the root cellar bubbled as they boiled. Monsieur Henri chopped garlic to scatter over the huge bowl of baby greens he’d fetched from the café.
2325. We grabbed combat naps. Right. Funny thing about a three-thousand-calorie supper—it’s hard to stay awake afterward.
0114. Up betimes, as olde Sam Pepys was fond of notating in his Diary. Showered and dressed, and ready to go within the hour.
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