Global Conspiracy

by David Shomron

  “Not good,” Martin muttered. “You’ll be alone, and we won’t be able to see you inside the café. Well, we’ll have to improvise something else, then. After getting the instructions by phone, leave the café and walk slowly. It may buy us some time to work something out.”

  “All right, I will. And Martin …”

  “Yes?”

  I love you! she wanted to say. I made a mistake. Come back to me! But the words wouldn’t come out.

  “Anne?” Martin was saying. “Is there anything else?”

  “No, no,” Anne whispered, and clicked the cellphone shut. She leaned on the bag of money, her eyes shut tight. A tear trickled down her cheek. Then she went to wash her face and reset her makeup.

  Martin felt a surge of mixed emotions. Annoyance was the most prominent—Anne was treating him as an ordinary team member, not anyone special. And concern—concern for Anne’s safety. Despite her disgraceful behavior toward him, he would have much preferred to take the phone call himself, down near the toilets of Café Dupond.

  Martin called the admiral.

  “Sitting in the café is out of the question,” Martin said. “We’re only assuming he knows only Anne. But if he recognizes one of us there, that will be the end of the story.”

  “Not good,” the admiral repeated Martin’s words.

  “As there is no parking along the street, I thought I’d fake a breakdown and raise the bonnet of my car. But it’s the oldest trick in the book, and if the blackmailer does come along, he’ll be sure to notice me.”

  “Don’t use a car, then,” the admiral said. “Try to find somewhere to observe the café while on foot. Follow Anne when she walks out. The blackmailer will probably be calling from somewhere else, so have your car on standby as near as you can.”

  Anne got out of the taxi in front of the Café Dupond at five minutes to five p.m. She entered the café, stood by the bar, and ordered a glass of white wine. After drinking it and paying, she took the bag and went downstairs. There were three telephone booths—beyond the leftmost were the toilets.

  There was no one in sight. Anne began to perspire again, and she found breathing an effort.

  “Shut your eyes!” a gruff, male voice commanded her.

  Anne obeyed. She felt the bag being snatched roughly out of her hand. Anne opened her eyes, and briefly saw a man running up the stairs. In that split second, she saw a yellow raincoat, and possibly a woman’s blonde wig.

  He fooled us, she thought. He was waiting in the toilet!

  Anne was still afraid to go upstairs. She made urgent use of one of the toilet stalls, and composed herself to face the world again. She had just experienced the most frightening event in her life.

  Anne staggered out of the café as if drunk. She walked slowly, using the wall with one hand for support. Martin saw her come out without the bag. No one else had left the café before Anne.

  He tricked us! Martin thought. He must have found another exit.

  He continued to follow Anne carefully, and Philip was not far behind him. It wasn’t long before she hailed a cruising taxi and drove off. Martin immediately called the admiral, and reported what he had witnessed.

  “Come to my hotel at once,” the admiral said. “Anne will probably call you shortly, and I want us to be together then.”

  “I’ll be over right after we check the café’s interior,” Martin said and hung up.

  Martin was just entering the admiral’s hotel room when his cellular phone rang.

  “It … it was awful,” Anne stammered. “I’m still shaking.”

  “Are you all right?” Martin asked.

  “Yes, I’ll be fine,” Anne said. “Martin, I …”

  But Martin had already handed his phone to the admiral.

  “It’s Patrick, Anne,” he said. “Are you in need of any attention, my dear?”

  “I … no, I’m fine. Hello, Patrick.”

  “Tell me what happened.”

  “He … he was waiting for me in the toilets. He grabbed the bag and ran. I didn’t … I couldn’t …”

  “Take it easy, my dear,” the admiral said in a paternal voice. “You’re safe now. Try to relax. Do you think you could manage a train trip to Brussels?”

  “Yes … I’ll be there.”

  “Six o’clock then, Anne. I’ll summon Sir Cedric, too. Get some rest on the train.”

  At the emergency board meeting that evening in Brussels, the entire blackmailing episode, and their failure to get the faintest lead to its solution, were the first topics on the agenda.

  “Philip and I followed Anne until she got into a taxi,” Martin said. “We then returned to the Café Dupond and discovered a back entrance. I peeked outside and saw a small yard with access for the dustcart through an alley at the back. Our man pulled off a neat trick, there.”

  “We must now always keep in mind,” Sir Cedric said, “that from now on we should consider ourselves exposed. This mystery man knows about us, and we are at his mercy. I think we should reconsider the entire issue.”

  “Indeed, I have,” the admiral said softly. “I’ve been trying to put myself in the blackmailer’s shoes. I’d be thinking something like: ‘What do I gain by exposing these people? So maybe they’ll be arrested—why should I care? On the contrary, as long as they are free and active, they’ll continue to be a target for more blackmail. If I expose them, I’ll be killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.’”

  “That’s all well and fine,” Sir Cedric spluttered. “But we cannot tolerate being blackmailed!”

  “I agree. But judging by this blackmailer’s conduct—the notes, the café, the disguise –my gut feeling is that he is really just small fry. Half a million euros must be a fortune for him. So I’m not very concerned about exposure. I expect him to make another demand, eventually, possibly for an even larger sum, but, by then, I’m hoping we will have either accomplished our missions, or found a way to thwart him, or both!”

  “Rather expensive, isn’t it?” Martin said.

  “Consider the alternatives,” the admiral said simply.

  The admiral’s words had a soothing effect on the foursome. As there was no more to be said on the blackmail issue, they proceeded with the agenda despite the bitter taste they still carried with them.

  They discussed some of the recent statements by heads of state worldwide. Apparently, Iran was not preparing a nuclear arsenal, and couldn’t do so even if she wanted to. Some press reports claimed that this was known to the US for over five years.

  The association referred again to the Iranian president’s call to the US to apologize for libeling the Iranian people to the effect that they were building nuclear weapons.

  “The Persians have a long history,” Sir Cedric smiled sadly, “of being the most wily merchants in the world. There has never been a case in which they have not outwitted their innocent Western customers. And it’s working today, too. They played the game of standing their ground, not permitting IAEA inspectors to investigate their nuclear installations—thus creating pressure with which the West doesn’t know how to cope. And their little stratagem with the ‘accidental’ sketches. It’s pitiful!”

  “According to my sources,” the admiral said, “and I needn’t remind you that this information is strictly confidential, the Iranians are forging full steam ahead with military nuclear development. They want the bomb—no doubt of it. But they needed to buy time to build their underground installations, and they gained this time by their various methods of artifice and trickery. Now that they have probably completed the concealing of the bulk of their activities, they’ll allow inspectors a ‘free hand’ in checking anything they liked.”

  “That really puts the West in a rather stupid light, doesn’t it?” Sir Cedric said.

  “Actually, no,” the admiral said. “I believe that the West has not been bamboozled, and that they are well aware of what I have just told you. But for tactical reasons, they pretend to believe the Iranian promises. At the same ti
me, they’re preparing for the worst. At least, I hope they are.”

  “As far as we’re concerned,” Anne said, “it means we need to finalize our preparations. We need to act as soon as possible. I suggest we now hear about training in Korea, and then more facts about pilotless flying objects.”

  I couldn’t even say his name, she moaned silently. I know I cannot take much more of this agony.

  Outwardly, her voice indicated that she had regained total control of herself, and that the traumatic events of a few hours ago were now just unpleasant memories.

  Martin glanced at Anne sharply, regarding her rather rude choice of words. Her face was already downcast and studying the glass in her hand. He turned, deliberately addressing the other two men, and described the training sessions with Sing and his team.

  “I gave the map with the military base markings to the admiral on the day I returned,” Martin concluded.

  “Weren’t you afraid they might construe this as spying?” Sir Cedric asked.

  “Yes, I was. But I had prepared an excuse—if challenged, I would ‘clarify’ that I only intended to know of the bases from where the parades were supposed to leave.”

  “Very clever,” Sir Cedric said, nodding his head.

  “Now,” the admiral said. “Is there any progress regarding the unmanned planes?”

  Martin had debriefed George earlier, and had the information at his fingertips.

  “There are quite a few manufacturers of UAVs,” he said, and repeated the uses that George had told him. “Some of them can fly as high as twenty thousand feet and remain airborne up to fifteen hours without refueling. All of them are radio-remote-controlled from the ground. And nearly all of them are equipped with cameras, also operated by remote control.”

  “How much can they carry?” Sir Cedric asked.

  “That depends on the model. Our Excalibur weighs eighty-five kilograms, so George looked into models that could carry more. A certain Swiss company could possibly provide the solution.”

  “We have to find a justification for buying a UAV,” muttered the admiral.

  “Yes, of course,” Martin said. “George realized he’d need to tell a story to the company from which we make the purchase. We don’t qualify for the regular civilian usages I mentioned—firefighting, border patrolling, etc.—but we can definitely reuse our old cover story—movie making! I challenge you to find a defect in that!”

  They smiled at each other.

  “Point taken, Martin,” the admiral said. “It will be an adequate cover.”

  “George did, however, raise two questions to which I had no answer,” Martin continued. “Where do we launch the UAV from, and how do we get it to wherever that location may be?”

  “Oh, that shouldn’t be too hard … ,” Sir Cedric said, and started mumbling alternatives to himself.

  “Let’s see now …” muttered the admiral, and sank into silent thought.

  Anne, too, furrowed her brow in contemplation.

  Two minutes later, the admiral broke the silence.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t come up with anything. This looks like a tougher nut to crack than I imagined. Why don’t we all—”

  “Boat,” Anne said.

  “I beg your pardon?” Sir Cedric exclaimed.

  “We can transport the plane on a boat,” Anne repeated. “They carry huge containers and stuff, don’t they? Why not a UAV?”

  Admiral Stone stared at her.

  “Why, Anne,” he said, “I do believe you’re absolutely right! Though a yacht would be more suitable for our purposes. We could calculate the dimensions of the yacht in accordance to the size of the UAV. Martin, could we take this plane apart and ship it in pieces?”

  Martin shook his head.

  “I already inquired,” he said.

  “So it’ll have to be a bigger yacht,” the admiral continued.

  “Just how much should such a yacht cost?” Sir Cedric asked.

  “Well,” the admiral said, “it’s been some time since I last dabbled in these things, but I can tell you that for our purposes—that is, a boat that can travel thousands of kilometers and be self-sufficient for several weeks—it would probably cost several million dollars, perhaps as much as twenty million, depending on size and age.”

  “As far as I know,” Martin said. “UAVs need a runway to take off from. So we can perhaps transport a UAV, at enormous expense, to wherever we want, but we still don’t know how to launch it once we’re there.”

  “I’m a sailor, Martin,” the admiral said, “not an aviator.”

  “No offence, admiral,” Martin said. “But off the cuff, I would suggest that when the yacht approaches as near as possible by sea, the UAV will have to be taken ashore. A land vehicle would tow it and the control panel to a runway, and the launching would occur there.”

  “Do you think your friends could find such a runway in South Korea close enough to the border?” Sir Cedric asked.

  “Stop, please!” Anne requested. “This is getting us nowhere. Launching may be difficult, but I think it’s feasible. Let’s stick with what we know for the moment, shall we? And by that I mean Admiral Stone’s nautical expertise.”

  “Thank you, Anne,” the admiral said. “There are a few additional things I think you should be aware of. A yacht of the size we’re talking about needs a crew—a qualified captain, a mechanic, a cook, and some deckhands. Recruiting these personnel would be an operation unto itself.”

  “We might restrict ourselves to recruiting just one or two,” Anne said with a smile.

  “And how do you figure that?” the admiral asked.

  “With all due respect,” Anne’s smile remained on her lips, “could a retired admiral be qualified to sail a yacht?”

  They all laughed, not least the admiral.

  “I don’t know of any mechanic among us,” Anne continued, “but we have deckhands and, I believe, more than one cook. Remember, we’ll be a movie crew as well. So, we have our actress, Patricia, who did so well in Tunisia and Iran. There’s George, her brother, who’ll be our aviation expert—he’ll operate the UAV when the time comes. Then there are George’s four colleagues: John, Bernard, Philip, and Spencer. With our illustrious captain here, that’s seven crewmembers. So all you need to recruit is one seaworthy mechanic!” Anne looked around her triumphantly.

  “You know,” the admiral smiled softly, “that just might work.”

  Sir Cedric clapped his hands in glee. Martin nodded to himself, still not looking at Anne.

  “Would it be too presumptuous, Patrick,” Anne continued, “to request you to handle the yacht issue? It would look like a very natural quest for an admiral, and your knowledge of the subject is certainly the most extensive.”

  The admiral smiled and nodded.

  “I doubt we’ll find a yacht large enough to contain the twelve-meter wingspan of a UAV,” he said. “And we’re certainly not going to leave it exposed on deck. Let’s ask George to find one with folding, or detachable, wings. If none are available, we may need to modify an existing model or have a new one built for us, no matter how much it costs.”

  “What about recruiting a mechanic?” Martin asked.

  “I’ll poke around and get some recommendations. Then I’ll interview the candidates regarding their qualifications. I’ll then refer them to you to screen ideologically, and see if they’re fit for our association.”

  “Well, then,” Anne said, “I suggest that Cedric leave right away for his South American tour, and you, Patrick, will visit Pakistan after you’ve found a suitable yacht and candidates for a ship’s mechanic. Agreed?”

  It was unanimous.

  “Good” Anne said. “We’ll continue meeting this way, even though I have not observed anyone following me for some time. Before the admiral leaves, we’ll find another way to keep things under control in his absence. We’ll leave, as usual, one by one.”

  Anne left the suite and went down to the lobby. Her heart was poundin
g savagely. She stood by the newsstand for a couple of minutes, willing her emotions into a lull.

  This time I’ll catch Martin and explain everything. But I need to calm down first. Deep breaths, now. I think I had better sit down and wait for him to descend. Is he going to forgive me? Or brush me off forever? There he is!

  Martin came out of the elevator and walked briskly to the exit.

  Now! Catch up with him now! Call him!

  Anne couldn’t move. She sat as if paralyzed, and watched Martin disappear through the revolving doors. With an immense effort, she wrenched herself up and ran after him. She was just in time to see the taxi he had entered drive off.

  Numb with disappointment, she took the next taxi to the railway station.

  I can’t believe myself. Am I really that weak? Is this the way I’ll live my life now—trying all the time, but not trying enough? Day after day of self-imposed wretchedness? I’m losing Martin, the man I love with all my heart, and it’s just because I lack the courage to face him? Professor Anne Dupré, you deserve all the misery you have!

  SIXTY-NINE

  Commissaire Duval combed through the list of employees at the Irradiation Department. He compared the list to the pile of statements deposited by these employees to the investigating policemen. There was a single discrepancy: Jean-Paul Valensi, an elderly archive clerk about to retire, had not been questioned. Duval memorized the number written next to Valensi’s name.