by David Bishop
“Sully? I can’t believe it. My God. I’ve spent dozens of hours talking with Sully. If this is true, the terrorists have my doctrine already and inside knowledge about which portions of it I feel less confident. … Shit.”
“Sir, before calling, I spoke with the CIA station chief. As soon as I hang up we’ll forward the documents to you on Sullivan.”
“Good. I’ll get with Templeton at CIA and have him jump on getting confirmation.”
“I suggest a complete dossier on Sullivan with full surveillance. The woman is a snake.”
“If this is true that bitch is pretty brazen. At her encouragement, I met with the director of the Arab-American Loyalist Council.”
“It’s possible that person could be her contact. A way for her to interface with the terrorists, out in the open, without looking suspicious. I suggest you have Director Templeton develop a full look at the director of that council.”
“Anything else?”
“When you’re fully convinced of Sullivan’s traitorous behavior, don’t take any action against her before we get Benoit to the U.S. That would intensify the terrorist hunt for Benoit.”
“You don’t doubt any of what you’ve told me?”
“No, sir. Not in the slightest. After you see what’s I’m sending, you won’t either.”
* * *
When Benoit finished navigating the twists and turns that took him downhill from his home, he called Ryan Testler who agreed to a switch of plans. They wouldn’t use the downtown hotel room Testler set up for their first meeting. Benoit wanted to meet at an inn east of Paris.
Benoit gave him the details. “The room is around back. Park on the street behind the chateau and approach from the rear on foot. There are three guest rooms with doors that open to the back of the chateau. At eight, knock three times on the door farthest to the right, count to ten, and knock once more. I’ll let you in.”
“Have you reserved that room?”
“Don’t worry, I have everything set.”
“Look, Benoit, I stay alive because I do worry. I don’t trust you at this point, if I ever will. Just what the hell did you mean when you said, ‘I have everything set’?”
“I have an arrangement with the innkeeper for whom I’ve done favors at the bank. No registering, no record, no visit from the housekeeper until the afternoon of the following day. Every other week for the past six months I’ve gone there and entered that way. My visits have been to meet a woman. The French are very discreet. Anyone watching my movements will see nothing out of the ordinary.”
“And what about this woman, the one you meet?”
“She comes at seven-thirty, very prompt. I’ll tell her I’m ill and don’t want her to catch it. I’ll give her the usual payment and send her on her way.”
“Just don’t call her and tell her. Let her come.”
“I agree, but why do you recommend that?”
Testler glanced up to see Linda go into their hotel bathroom. “She could, knowingly or not knowingly, serve more interests than you. If anyone watching her or you finds she’s not coming, they’ll conclude you won’t be going to the chateau. The breaking of routines, any out-of-the ordinary movement, piques interest. All the way through this to the end, you’d be smart to keep it all looking like same old same old.”
“Good advice. It shall be done.”
“And just what do you see happening when I come to your chateau at eight?”
“I’ll expect you to confirm we have a deal, including the details of where and when you will sweep me up and take me to America.”
“No wife. No children. No mistress. Only you. Is that still correct?”
“Correct.”
“I ask again, what about your wife?”
“Elouise was once a woman a man found easy to love, and quickly be made to feel unworthy. She is now a prune more wrinkled on the inside.”
“Final answer, only you?”
“Only me.”
* * *
After getting off the phone with Henri Benoit, Ryan sat down next to Linda. “I need to tell you more about my mission and why we’re in Europe.”
“Aah. Something’s changed and, apparently, not for the better.” Linda angled her body toward Ryan and put her open hand on his thigh. “Start with what happened to change your mind about telling me more. And who the hell was that guy who called you out of the blue? You said he was a prior informer.”
“Okay, let’s start there, with him. The caller, no names, is a scuzzy French banker. If you got any shit you don’t want found, you put it in a shit bank. For a fee, your high-up man on the inside will keep it in a safe deposit box, or an account with a blind trail to no one. If you’re planning a terrorist play somewhere in the world and you need to get money moved to fund it. The shit banker will move the money through the banking system without a traceable path. To do this, the money must start at a bank and go to a bank in a country that hasn’t signed onto the international protocol for reporting large amounts transferred from one country to another. Or the terrorists can use the worldwide hawala system.
“The what?”
“Hawala brokers or hawaladars. Sort of like unofficial banks, little or no licensing, no oversight from our banking regulators. The Hawala system started in the eighth century. Interpol defines the hawala as money transfers without money movements. Many hawaladars are legit, but a good chunk of ‘em aren’t. In these transactions, a hawaladar in one place takes money in, then contacts a second hawaladar in another place, mostly another country, who then delivers the money. To stay in the hawala system, these brokers must be trustworthy among their brethren. It works sort of like a bookmaker who lays off some of his action on a given game with another bookie, usually in another region of the country. This allows both bookies to roughly balance their winning and losing bets on a given game. The objective is to prevent any one bookie from getting slammed by having to pay off on too many bets, and they both make their margin off the vigorish from their respective bets. In a manner of speaking, insurance companies do the same thing through what they call reinsurance.”
“Christ, all mighty. There’s a whole damn world out there I don’t know about.”
“It’s complicated.”
“In your example, how do these two hawaladars settle between them?”
“In virtually any way the two of them agree. A good number of hawaladars are also in the export-import business. If so, they can swap merchandise with the broker owed receiving more goods in what is booked as an even exchange. Another derivation occurs when the owed broker overcharges for his merchandise. When the one owing pays for the merchandise, the payment includes the amount owed to the other for the hawala transaction.”
“I’ve never heard of this stuff.”
“Most people haven’t.”
“God save the king.”
Eventually, Ryan moved the conversation around to their current predicament. He told her about the task given to him by President Wellington and that Paris was setup to be the last stop in phase one of his mission. That the need to tell her more resulted from his being followed.
“Are you sure? About being followed I mean?”
“No doubt. One man on foot, another in a black Mercedes. Why do you ask?”
“Because I just realized I may have been followed myself.”
Benoit told me, but I didn’t realize she was aware.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Oh, sure. Like we’ve spent lots of time together this last little while. Every time you come in, you end up turning around and running back out. … Okay, I should have told you, but, well, at first I thought I was just being paranoid. Then later, when a second guy got too close for comfort, I saw him as some guy hitting on me. Men have been known to hit on me, you know.”
Ryan got up from the couch and sat on the coffee table facing Linda. He took her hands in his. “Tell me all of it—all of it.”
“There’s not that much.” She told
him about the man who seemed to be interested in her for over an hour before disappearing. Then, finding another man when she got back to the hotel. “This second man approached me.”
“What happened?”
“You would have been proud of me. I used some of what you’ve taught me. It worked.”
“Leave out nothing. Not the smallest detail.”
She told him the facts. “I sent him reeling. He left. I haven’t seen him since. Christ, I’ve hardly left this room since. I figured the first man was a gawker. The second man, the one at the hotel, I sized up as what turn-of-the-century authors called a rake or a dandy. When he approached me, I thought he was going to make a pass.”
“For him to be waiting at the hotel means they know where we’re staying.” Ryan went on to tell her what he learned from Henri Benoit, without giving up his name.
“If you see him again or any person appearing to follow you, I need you to tell me immediately.”
“Of course, but who would be all that interested in your coming here to talk to government leaders? That kinda thing goes on all the time, or so the news leads us to believe.”
“Not with respect to the resetting of America’s policy for support, indifference, or action in the Middle East.”
“Do you expect them to try to kill you?”
“In this business that risk is always there. In this case, it’s not likely, at least not yet. If they did, the president would simply send a different emissary. With that would come the possibility of the opposition not knowing the identity of the substitute. For the moment, they’re satisfied knowing I’m here under orders from the president. They can keep their eye on me to learn when I’ve met with the officials of each government. With that information they can watch the movements and public statements of those leaders. And use their agents inside each government to attempt to learn what was discussed and what agreements, if any, were reached.”
“What about this Frenchman whose name you won’t mention. Is he the one who called and you left right away to meet?”
“Yes. Frenchie’s a wild card. He’s not related to my mission for the president. Right now, I can’t say a lot about the man, maybe never. I have to leave now to meet with him again. I’ll be gone for several hours, maybe through the night. I’ll try to find a point where I can call and check in with you. Keep your gun with you. Don’t shoot unless someone comes inside this room uninvited. I seriously doubt that’ll happen. At this point, there’s no percentage in them getting rough. Still, if that does occur, wait until whoever it is gets close, then shoot for the broad center of him. When he’s down and still, stuff that extra gun that’s in your hatbox in his front waistband making it appear to be his gun. Wipe your prints off before you put it with him, then call hotel security. Tell them a strange man entered your room uninvited. He was silent and moved toward you. There was a gun in the top of his trousers. When he came at you, you grabbed your gun and fired. Scared, you fired until he was quiet. You don’t know if he’s dead. You were scared. That’s all you know.”
“And how do I explain the gun? We just arrived in Paris. They’d assume I wasn’t able to bring it on the plane.”
“Just tell them, I gave it to you. That’s all you know. If this scenario develops I’ll handle it from there. By that point, D.C. will likely have gotten them to shut down their inquiry.”
Chapter 14
At first, Testler resisted Benoit’s change from the hotel they’d already used to the chateau where the Frenchman met his mistress. Still, undeniably, there were advantages. Using the chateau meant anyone who followed Benoit periodically in the past would see his going to the hotel as a change in his habit pattern, while going to the Inn to meet his mistress would be part of his normal behavior. Besides, if Benoit was not for real, it would be better to learn the truth here in France before bringing him to the States.
Ryan arrived at the chateau an hour before the agreed time. He took a position under a tree in a small garden area about ten yards beyond a pond behind the rear of the inn. At seven-fifteen, he watched a shapely woman approach the last door on the right. She knocked with her right hand, a purse on a long strap dangled from her left shoulder. The door opened and she entered.
A large cloud moved past the moon. Once freed, the moonlight tossed a quivering pattern across the pond water. From Ryan’s squatting position, a small landscape light revealed a mosquito silently approaching the still pond. It flew in low to avoid the magical senses of night-feeding bats, and landed on legs as slight as a single strand of a spider’s web. The landing barely dented the water. Ryan envied the near invisibility of the mosquito.
After fifteen minutes, the woman came out. When she paused under the light, through his binoculars, Ryan saw her copper skin was as smooth as a tune from Benny Goodman’s clarinet. A breath of breeze tossed a handful of her hair across the side of her face. A rake with her hand and a head flip moved it back.
Everything looked fine. The only change being, when she came out, the small purse on the long strap dangled from her opposite shoulder.
Did Benoit’s payment cause that change?
With the patience of a sniper, Ryan held his position for another fifteen minutes. The rear corner of the chateau was softly colored by a floodlight installed just below the roofline, its light dimmed by distance. After that delay, carrying his gun away from the few draped chateau windows facing in his direction, he steadily approached the back of the chateau.
His steps left tracks in the damp grass as he distanced himself from the pond. Once on the blacktop of the parking area, he quickened his pace until he stood just outside the door on which he would knock.
* * *
At nearly that same moment, someone knocked on the entrance to Linda’s hotel room. She stepped into the bathroom, turned on the light, and pulled its door mostly closed. She gripped the gun behind her back and leaned forward to look through the peephole. A room-service attendant stood on the other side. When he looked up, she recognized him as the same attendant who this morning brought her coffee, toast, and a half a grapefruit.
That was fourteen hours ago. Can they be that shorthanded?
She reached back and stuffed the gun behind the top of her slacks, bloused her loose-fitting jersey over it, and opened the door. “The gentleman’s in the bathroom. Please put both meals on the table.”
He smiled. She stepped to the side, kept her right hand on her hip, and pointed toward the coffee table.
He put the tray down, moved the dishes to the table, and leaned the tray against the side of the dresser, “Did you have a pleasant day in Paris?”
“Yes.” She smiled. “I did a little shopping and walked for exercise.”
He held his hand out with the ticket for what she’d ordered.
“Put it next to the food. I have a pen.” She kept the coffee table between them. “I’ll meet you over at the door.” When he stepped away, she leaned down, added a tip, and signed. She gave him the signed bill, while casually returning her right hand to the small of her back. “Thank you, please let yourself out.”
“When you’re finished just put the dishes on the tray and leave it outside the door. No need to call down. Our staff is always alert for trays left in the hallways to be picked up.”
When he shut the door, Linda withdrew the gun, widened her stance, and stayed alert in case he came back. Or, someone else entered in a rush after the attendant reported how he sized up Linda and the layout of her room. The next two minutes passed like ten. She kept the gun at the ready and slowly walked to the door and engaged the deadbolt.
She returned to the couch, sat down, and slid the gun into the crease at the end of the couch. Feeling safe, she turned her attention to the salad and cheese bread she ordered along with a second meal for Ryan in case he got back tonight and was hungry. Along with the closed door to a lit bathroom, ordering a meal for Ryan presented the impression she wasn’t alone.
Earlier today her emotions were unsettled by the m
an on the street. She reasoned he was waiting for his wife who was shopping in the same cluster of stores. That likelihood turned remote when the second man confronted her outside the hotel. Now, she found herself spooked by a room-service attendant.
Christ, I’m being paranoid.
Chapter 15
After counting to ten, Testler added the fourth and final knock on the door of the room farthest to the right at the back of the chateau. Banker Benoit immediately opened the door. The frequent licking of his lips confessed his inner turmoil. He closed the door partway, turned sideways, and spasmodically motioned Ryan into the room.
“Are we set?” Benoit closed the door. “Tomorrow, right?”
Testler put his hand on Benoit’s shoulder turning him and pushing him away from the door. Testler rechecked it to be sure Benoit locked it. He had. The drapes were fully closed over the room’s only window. The room looked as secure as rooms in public accommodations ever do.
Benoit sat on a chair against the far wall. Testler ordered the banker to move to a chair near the head of the room’s king-size bed. Benoit’s feet were flat on the floor. He put his hands on the arms on the chair, his knuckles white from the tension of his grip.
Testler casually slid his hand down into the seam beside the chair cushion. He then used his other hand to check the opposite end of the cushion.
No gun.
“Okay. All right. Come on, Testler. Come on. Are we set? Outside my bank, tomorrow. Like we agreed, right?”
Testler smiled and nodded. “No sweat. This’ll be easy. My men may appear as sidewalk pedestrians or as customers exiting your bank at the time you do. Don’t have family or friends with you. Come out alone. That way it’s unlikely anyone nearby will attempt to interfere.”
Benoit moved his hands around like butterflies on blossoms. “Okay,” he repeated again. “Okay. No problem. I can do that. Yes. That should work.”
“Then we’re set.”