“I got that,” Brian said.
“While I am talking to the guard, do not speak because your accent will give you away. And try not to move around. We do not want your American walk to give you away, either.”
“My what?”
“Your American walk.”
“There’s no such thing!”
“There is and you have one. A very distinctive one.”
Brian was about to object when Larissa spotted the guard through the building’s glass entrance. “Ah bien,” she said, waving flirtatiously at the young blond man. “We have luck. I know Marc well. Now be quiet.”
As they entered the building, Brian noticed a sign that said “Recherché Physique.” He adopted a sheepish look as he followed Larissa toward the guard. Her expression brightened. “Salut, Marc,” she said, initiating a cyclone of French that whirled between her and the guard. Brian could pick out only a few familiar terms: Papa, bureau, nuit, mon lapin. The last phrase snared his attention.
Marc regarded Brian curiously at first, but subsequent glances were friendly. Brian nodded at Marc and stood with his hands in his pockets, as awkward and embarrassed as he figured Larissa’s boyfriend would act in the situation. Did Larissa have a boyfriend? Brian hoped not.
Larissa ended the conversation with a laugh. She looped her arm through Brian’s and guided him to a stairwell. The contact gave Brian a rush, and he wondered how long he could enjoy pretending to be Larissa’s boyfriend.
Once out of the guard’s earshot, Brian asked, “Did I hear you call me your rabbit?”
She chuckled. “Yes, lapin means sweetie.”
“The things they don’t teach you in high school French,” Brian said.
Past the first flight of stairs, Larissa unhooked her arm from Brian’s. Oh well, he thought, it was fun while it lasted.
“Papa’s office is on the third floor,” she said.
“How do you know the guards so well?” Brian asked. “I didn’t get the impression you visited your father here often.”
“No, not my father, but Mathilde and I visit her papa almost weekly. He is a professor of astronomy. That is why we had some luck that Marc was downstairs. He usually works in the astronomy complex, across the canal.”
“Do French teenagers often visit their parents at work?”
“No, but Mathilde’s papa is very amusing and we enjoy our lunches with him.” She smiled slyly. “Also, it gives us the excuse to admire the sexy university boys.”
Larissa opened the stairwell door at the third floor landing and led Brian down a corridor. They turned a corner to a hallway marked “Laboratoire Antennes, Dispositifs et Matériaux Micro-Ondes.”
“Does micro-ondes mean microwaves?” Brian asked.
“Oui,” she said. “You learn quickly.”
They walked past five doors in the empty hallway before coming to one with a plaque that read “E. DeJonge.” As Larissa unlocked and opened the door, Brian’s subconscious registered that the room’s light should not be on. But before that thought could take conscious form, they already had stepped into her father’s office and discovered the stranger hunched in the corner.
CHAPTER 14--RING
A black woman was kneeling next to a file cabinet, her hands hovering above the papers and manila folders in an open drawer. Her mouth opened in surprise as Brian and Larissa entered the office, then snapped shut. Her expression made two more rapid transformations. First her eyes narrowed, fiercely intelligent and registering aggravation. Then her eyes widened and all guile vanished. One of these faces was a mask, and Brian had a fair guess which.
The woman’s clothes were the reason Brian and Larissa didn’t panic. She wore a cleaning woman’s uniform, an indigo smock with orange piping over a canary yellow polo shirt and chinos. The shirt had a logo with a vacuum cleaner and feather duster that was partly hidden by the smock. It was not unusual to find a cleaning woman in an office building at eleven o’clock at night. It was unusual to find her rifling through a file cabinet.
The woman stood, but before she did, Brian saw her right hand pass over her left, as if she surreptitiously had dropped something into the open drawer. Stepping forward, she knocked the drawer shut with the heel of her foot. She approached them with her hands out pleadingly and began speaking a French that even Brian could tell was heavily accented.
“What’s she saying?” he asked Larissa.
“She is saying that the drawer was open when she came in and that she was about to call the guard.”
“That’s crap,” Brian said. “Ask her why the office door was locked if she was still inside.”
Larissa asked, and the woman eyed Brian before responding. Larissa relayed the reply: “She said she did not know the door was locked. It must have locked behind her.”
“More crap. Does she speak English?”
Larissa translated, and the woman shook her head slowly.
Brian looked back at the filing cabinet. The drawer hadn’t closed all the way. “She’s speaking with an accent, isn’t she?”
“Yes,” Larissa said. “Many African immigrants live in Toulouse.”
Larissa asked the woman a question, and Brian didn’t need a translation when she answered, “Cameroun.”
To Larissa, Brian said, “Check the computer. Is it on?”
“No,” she replied as Brian went to the filing cabinet. The woman’s eyes followed him. On the floor near the cabinet were a rag and a plastic spray bottle filled to the top with blue fluid. No other cleaning supplies were in the room. He picked up the spray bottle. Its nozzle was dry.
“Ask her where her cart is.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The hallway was empty. If she was cleaning the room, there should be a cart full of supplies outside the door.”
While Larissa spoke to the woman, Brian pulled the cabinet drawer open and knelt beside it. The woman tried to keep her eyes on Larissa, but her glance often shifted to Brian.
“She said she had already moved up to the next floor when she realized she forgot to clean my father’s office. She left her cart upstairs.”
Brian wished Larissa hadn’t identified this as her father’s office, but the woman could have figured that out anyway. He began to pull files from the drawer and riffle through the papers.
“What are you looking for?” Larissa said.
“Ask her.”
Before Larissa could ask anything, the woman started to speak rapidly and urgently. Brian pulled another file, flipped through the pages and put it aside. Larissa began translating before the woman finished. Their voices sounded as if they were in a race. “She is begging us not to turn her in,” Larissa said. “She cannot afford to lose this job. She has three children she must feed and her husband cannot work …”
As Larissa spoke Brian pulled a file from the drawer that was heavier than the others. When he caught a gleam of metal amid the papers within, he knew he had found what the woman had dropped. He opened the file and was startled by what he saw.
“That’s OK,” Brian said as he stood. “I only have one more question for her.” He held up the object and examined it for a moment. “How many Cameroon immigrants living in Toulouse wear a West Point class ring?”
The woman’s pleadings halted. Her eyes, hard once more, were on the ring, but Brian couldn’t read her expression. Larissa’s was easy to read, though. She was incensed.
“Are you saying we caught a CIA agent spying in my father’s office?”
Before Brian replied, it popped into his mind that Marceline Knight, the Blake woman in Lightingrod, had been a West Point graduate, and she worked for a different American agency.
“Not CIA,” Brian said. “DIA.”
The cleaning woman’s eyes widened. She caught herself and instantly resumed a cool, inscrutable gaze, but it was too late. She had blown her cover.
Brian read the name inscribed inside the ring. “Ms. Lenore Harte here works for the Defense Intelligence Agency,” Brian
said. “That’s the Pentagon’s spy program, basically. Isn’t that right, Ms. Harte?”
The woman didn’t answer. She glared at Brian. He tossed the ring to her, unable to resist repeating a line from Clandestinely Yours that also referred to a telltale ring: “Vanity has its dangers.” Harte caught the ring and slipped it into her pocket.
Larissa picked up the phone. “I shall call Marc,” she said.
“No,” Brian said. “Don’t call security yet. Ms. Harte may be able to help us.”
“And what makes you think I would want to help Encyclopedia Brown and Nancy Drew?” The lugubrious vowels of the West African accent were gone. Lenore Harte’s voice was reedier than Brian expected, with an East Coast dialect. Almost Boston, but not quite. As she spoke she straightened her back and squared her shoulders. Those small adjustments altered her bearing entirely. One moment she was a poor African immigrant fearing for her job, the next she was a tough American intelligence operative dealing with two unexpected annoyances.
“Because if you don’t,” Brian said, “Larissa will call security and you will have to explain to your superiors in Washington how you were compromised by a couple of teenagers.”
“Compromised? Who the hell are you and why do you talk like an espionage textbook?”
“My name is Brian Parker,” he said, “I’m from Milwaukee, and I’m sort of a spy buff.”
Larissa added, “Brian is a very knowledgeable Foster Blake fan.”
“Foster Blake?” Harte rolled her eyes. “I knew I heard that line before. ‘Vanity has its dangers.’ Are you kidding me? Is that from My Darling Assassin?”
“Clandestinely Yours.”
Silver would have been amused, but Harte exploded. “I take enough garbage from the sexist fools in this business who think it’s hilarious to pull some smug Foster Blake shit. I am not about to take it from a Cheesehead tourist acting out some asinine college role-playing game.”
Brian held up his hand. “We’re not playing anything,” he said. “We think Larissa’s father may be in danger from a man named Mathias Skyrm.”
Harte went rigid at the mention of the name. “How do you know about Skyrm?”
“He tried to kidnap me this morning in Cannes,” Brian said, rubbing his sore shoulder.
“And that was after Brian escaped from a CIA agent in Nice,” Larissa added.
“Case officer,” Brian corrected.
Harte blinked then sat on the desk. “Are you saying you escaped two kidnap attempts today?”
“Three, counting the thug who jumped us at Larissa’s house earlier tonight.”
Larissa nodded. “Brian has had a busy day,” she said.
“And one of your would-be kidnappers was CIA?”
“He did kidnap me, but I got away.”
With a softer voice, Harte said, “I think you had better tell me about your day.”
“Why should he?” Larissa interjected.
“Because, as Brian said, I can probably help you. But I’ll need to hear your story first.”
Brian started talking.
CHAPTER 15--ZOMBIE
Harte asked most of her questions toward the beginning of Brian’s story. She had not heard of Tetzel and agreed with Brian’s theory that Tetzel had been on the periphery of Project Prometheus and inveigled his way in to spy for Silver. She asked more about Silver. Working for a rival agency magnified Harte’s contempt for the CIA officer who, to shield his own illegal deal, kidnapped a vacationing American minor (her word) and spirited him to another country. “That’s taking even rendition too far,” she muttered. She then assured Brian, “Don’t worry, I’ll see he burns for this.”
Harte grew silent after Brian described his escape from Silver. She let him complete his story without interruption aside from a few verifications from Larissa near the end. When Brian finished, Harte simply asked, “How’s your shoulder?”
“It’s better,” he said. “Still pretty sore, but better.”
“I’ll get you out of this, Brian,” Harte told him.
Brian believed her. For the first time since Silver drugged him on the train, he felt safe.
Larissa, though, was not willing to bend. “This woman must explain why she broke into my father’s office,” she said.
“I don’t have to,” Harte replied. “But I will. If your father’s in danger, we may be able to help him.”
“How?” Larissa asked.
“We can work that out,” Harte said, “but not here. We have to leave. You two have been up here too long already. The guard will get curious and may come to check on you.”
Harte had a plan. She would leave the building after Brian and Larissa, and the trio would regroup ten minutes later at her car. “I’m in parking lot eleven, outside the gymnasium. Do you know where that is?” she asked Larissa.
Larissa nodded. Harte described her car, a twelve-year-old yellow Peugeot 205, and gave them the license plate number. Brian and Larissa then left and, as Harte had predicted, they met Marc coming up the stairwell on his way to find them. Marc escorted them back to the entrance as Larissa offered an explanation. The only words Brian picked out this time were Papa and téléphone. Larissa ended her account at the door by hugging Brian’s arm and giving Marc a deep wink. The guard rewarded Brian with a jealous leer, and Brian felt his cheeks and forehead warm.
Still hugging Brian’s arm as they walked away, Larissa said, “He thinks you are too shy.”
“What did you tell him we were doing up there? Making out?”
“Why not? You are cute enough for the story to be convincing.” She laughed. “I think I am getting good at this.”
“Creating a cover story or making me blush?”
“Both,” she said. She gave his arm one last squeeze and jogged ahead, leading Brian through a maze of stubby concrete buildings.
As he ran, Brian again found his thoughts closing on the beautiful girl sprinting before him. Despite her apparent delight in teasing him, Brian felt more at ease with Larissa than any girl back in Wisconsin.
Once in the parking lot, they located Lenore Harte’s Peugeot easily among the seven cars present. Brian and Larissa waited about three minutes when Harte stepped out of the darkness.
“Hate to disappoint you,” Harte said to Brian as she unlocked the door, “but there are no machine guns behind the headlights.” She pulled off the blue smock, then put on a black nylon aviator jacket she retrieved from the driver’s seat.
Larissa slid into the back seat and Brian was about to follow when Harte said, “One of you sit up front with me so I don’t feel like a damn chauffeur.” Brian obeyed.
Pulling out of the lot, Harte said, “I have one stop to make before we can go to my apartment. I have a secure line at the apartment, so it’s the only place I can report to my control, but that’s when we’ll figure out how we’ll keep you safe, Brian.”
Brian nodded and said, “Thanks.”
From the back seat Larissa said, “Fine. Now why were you spying in my father’s office?”
Harte glanced over her shoulder to make momentary eye contact with Larissa before speaking. “This Prometheus system your father is working on is similar—in fact, almost identical—to a weapon the Pentagon has spent more than a decade developing.”
“My father would not steal from America, if that’s what you mean to say.”
“I’m not,” Harte said. “But there is a certain coincidence that can’t be ignored. Nine months ago the chief research scientist for the Pentagon project—”
“Roland Eck,” Brian interrupted. “He died in a plane crash.”
“How do you know that?” Harte said.
“Google.”
“Right,” Harte continued. “Well, the Pentagon’s program, which I’m sure Brian knows is called Positive Enforcement, stalled after Eck died.”
Harte slowed as she drove through the university gates, then sped south from the campus. “Eck was flying his own plane when he crashed,” she went on, “so w
e assumed his death was accidental. Then four months ago a European arms consortium made a research breakthrough on a similar weapon with specifics that mirrored Roland Eck’s, a weapon they will be demonstrating three days from now in Spain.”
“You had better not be implying my father killed your scientist for his research. My father has never been to your country.”
Harte remained calm but raised her voice above Larissa’s. “It is not my job to make judgments, Larissa. It is my job to uncover information and find connections. And there is one crucial thing that doesn’t connect. Your father’s specialty is microwaves, right?”
“Oui.”
“Well, both Positive Enforcement and Prometheus use millimeter waves. They are similar to microwaves, but different enough to arouse our suspicions when your father became enough of an expert in them four months ago to pick up where Roland Eck had left off, before his untimely departure.”
Larissa interjected, “My father—” but Harte cut her off.
“My superiors do not believe your father had anything to do with Eck’s death. But we think there is a strong possibility someone gave him Eck’s research, or fed it to him in such a way he believed it was his own idea.”
Brian, hoping to head off Larissa’s anger, tried to redirect the conversation. “Silver told me he believed Tetzel was about to pass along information related to the death of a Pentagon scientist and his stolen research.”
“Yes, I remember,” Harte said.
“Well, if Skyrm killed Tetzel, he might have had something to do with Roland Eck’s death. And if Skyrm is now after Larissa’s father, how could Dr. DeJonge be part of Skyrm’s cell? It doesn’t follow.”
Harte sighed. “Like I said, I am looking for connections. Larissa’s father is connected, but we aren’t sure how.”
The Boy Who Knew Too Much Page 8