He looked up and, seeing that his visitor was the American Ray Sharpe, issued what he thought was a smile but turned out to be a suppressed sneer. “Bonsoir, Sharpe,” he said. “Qu’est-ce que vous voulez?”
Which was only a marginally polite way of asking what the hell the CIA man wanted.
“C’mon, Claude, what’s eating you, old buddy? I’m here on a simple mission. The smallest piece of information, that’s all I want. You’ll probably know it off the top of your head.”
“Possiblement,” replied Chopin, lapsing into his customary combination of broken English and pure French. “But whether I tell it to you is a matter différente.”
“Claude, I have come over to see you because it is a rainy evening and I was just relaxing, having a beer, when I was interrupted by a phone call of such insignificance it made my hair curl…”
“It’s already frisé,” growled Chopin, who was very bald and thought Sharpe’s mop of curly hair made him look like a pop star.
Sharpe grinned. “Seriously, old pal, you can end my problems very easily…you remember when the gallant French Special Forces liberated the besieged Americans in the embassy right here in Brazzaville in 1999?”
“Who could forget?” Chopin shrugged, his mind roaming back to those terrifying days in the 1990s when armed gangs drove around the city with their victims’ severed heads stuck on their car antennae. “Of course I remember.”
“Well, I’m trying to remember the proper name of the Special Forces leader…they called him Le Chasseur…the hunter. Did you know him?”
“Of course I knew him. He was stationed here for several months. He stayed up the street, at the Stanley, for a few weeks—all those French officers stayed up there.”
“And Le Chasseur…you remember his name?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“Well, I’ve just been told there is to be a new presidential award for foreign nationals who have helped the United States beyond the call of duty.” Ray Sharpe was a think-on-your feet liar of outstanding talent—like most spies.
“We would like to bring them to Washington, with their wives and families, and decorate them for their bravery. President Bedford insists on conducting the ceremonies personally.”
“Very commendable,” said Chopin. “And they picked Le Chasseur after all these years?”
“It sometimes takes a new President to recognize a debt of honor,” replied Sharpe.
“Well, I can’t help you much,” said Chopin. “I heard he’d retired from the military. But his name was Jacques Gamoudi. Maj. Jacques Gamoudi. Everyone called him Le Chasseur, the hunter. He was a tremendous soldier, and a true hero, as I expect your American diplomats would confirm. Someone did tell me he’d made Colonel.”
“Thanks, Claude. That’s all we need. Washington will take it from there.”
Five minutes later Ray Sharpe was back on the line to the West African Desk in Langley. Three minutes after that, the phone rang in Lt. Commander Ramshawe’s office and a voice told him, “Jimmy, your man is Colonel Jacques Gamoudi, but he’s retired from the military. And you’re right about his nickname. He’s Le Chasseur, the hunter.”
Langley also told Ramshawe that their man in Brazzaville was still on the case and would call as soon as possible with anything more he could find. And this was not long in coming. Matilda’s boss, behind the long wooden bar in La Brasserie at the Stanley Hotel, had been there for years and knew Jacques Gamoudi.
The barman was not full of precise detail, but he remembered the Major as he then was—a light-skinned French North African, originally from Morocco.
“Was he married?” asked Ray Sharpe.
“Yes. Yes, he was,” replied the barman. “But she never came here. I saw a photograph of her, though. Her name was…er…wait a minute…she was Giselle…and either her parents or his…they lived somewhere up in the Pyrenees. I remember that.”
“How come?”
“Well, he always talked of the mountains. He said he liked the solitude. I think his father was some kind of a guide. But anyway he often told me that when he retired he would like to find employment as a mountain guide, and he always mentioned the cool air near his wife’s parents’ home. I think the terrible heat and humidity here in Africa can really get to you after a few years. Anyway, Jacques dreamed of the mountains—somewhere cold, I know that.”
Ray Sharpe got straight back on the phone to Langley, and finally returned to his beer cooler and swinging seat on the veranda of his Brazzaville home. It was still raining like hell, and he was comprehensively soaked. So he just sat steaming and sipping, wondering how the Red Sox were doing back home in spring training.
Lt. Commander Ramshawe studied his notes. He walked along to see Admiral Morris, and wondered, “Have we got enough to find him?”
“No trouble, Jimmy. I’ll have a quick word with our military attaché in the Paris embassy and then we’ll hand it back to the CIA guys in France to finish the job.”
In the next two hours CIA agents in France made probably fifty phone calls, and one of them came up trumps. Their top man in the French city of Toulouse, Andy Campese, was especially friendly with his opposite number in the French Secret Service. And DGSE Agent Yves Zilber, knowing absolutely nothing of the highly classified nature of the work of Le Chasseur, was cheerfully forthcoming to an old friend.
“Jacques Gamoudi. Oh sure. He and I worked together for a couple of years. I haven’t spoken to him recently, but he retired from the military and went to live somewhere up in the Pyrenees, near his wife’s family.
“As I recall, he became a mountain guide up on the Cirque de Troumouse—that’s a massive range up near the Spanish border, in the snow. You can only get up there about four months of the year, but I think Jacques is one of the top mountaineers in the area. He lives somewhere near a little place called Gedre.”
Just before the CIA man rang off, however, the French Secret Service agent remembered one further piece of helpful information.
“Andre,” he said, “Jacques changed his name, you know. A lot of guys retired from the service do. I might even do the same myself one day. Anyhow, he suddenly decided to call himself and his family Hooks. I once asked him why he picked such a curious name, and he said he once had a friend of that name, out in Africa.”
Andy Campese rang off with much gratitude. But twenty minutes later, Agent Zilber had second thoughts about what he had said. What was a CIA man doing inquiring about a retired French Secret Service officer? It was probably nothing, but he wanted to clear himself.
Agent Zilber always reported directly to Paris, and he put in a phone call to 128 Boulevard Montier, over in Caserne des Tourelles, in the outpost of the twentieth arrondissement, way to the west of the city center of Paris. He spoke briefly to the duty officer and, somewhat to his surprise, was asked to wait. Then a new voice came on the line and said, “Bonsoir, Agent Zilber. This is Gaston Savary, and I would like to hear your report.”
Agent Zilber was momentarily surprised at being put through to the head of the entire French Secret Service. This was very much a case of WOW! Gaston Savary! Mon Dieu! The head of the DGSE. What have I said? Or, worse yet, done?
“Well, sir. A short while ago I received a phone call from an acquaintance of mine, Andy Campese—works for U.S. intelligence. And he wanted to know a few details about an old colleague of ours, just a retired officer. No one important. And I just gave him a clue as to how to locate the man. It wasn’t much. You know how we often swap information with the American agents. Andre Campese has always been very helpful to us.”
“Of course,” replied Gaston Savary smoothly. “What was the name of the officer in whom he was interested?”
“Col. Jacques Gamoudi, sir.”
Gaston Savary froze. His whole system shuddered, his heart missed about six beats, his pulse packed up altogether, and his brain turned to stone. At least that’s what it felt like to Savary. But he was trained to accept shock. And after a three
-second pause, he spoke again. “And for which branch of American intelligence does Mr. Campese work?” he asked.
“He’s CIA, sir.”
Gaston Savary, a thin, sallow-complexioned man, turned instantly a whiter shade of pale. He was so stunned he gently put the phone down without making one further inquiry. And before him stood a vision of France being outlawed from the international community.
And it was his own department, the glorious Direction Generale de la Sécurité Exterieure (DGSE), successor to the sinister SPECE, that had sprung the leak.
Gaston Savary held his face in his hands and tried to breathe normally. He took an iron grip on himself and his emotions. But, in truth, he could have wept.
THURSDAY, MARCH 25, 9:00 A.M. (LOCAL)
THE PYRENEES
They’d been driving all night, fighting their way by car up the mountains from Toulouse, the temperature dropping, and the weather worsening all the way as they climbed into the rugged high country. The 220-mile trek had taken almost seven hours, two of those hours spent on the final forty miles running southward and upward along the winding, treeless road from the town of Tarbes to Gedre.
The easiest part was finding the address of Le Chasseur. Even the local milkman, delivering early on the south side of Gedre, had known of the near-legendary mountain guide Monsieur Jacques Hooks.
In short order, Andy Campese and his colleague, a twenty-eight-year-old French-born American, Guy Roland, hit the village of Heas, entered the village store and bakery at 7:30 A.M., bought takeout coffee, a fresh warm baguette, and a few slices of ham.
Almost as an afterthought, Andy reached the door and called back, “Monsieur Hooks…straight on?”
“Four houses up the street on the left. Number eight.”
Andy Campese considered he had done a very cool night’s work. And it was cool—about 34 degrees Fahrenheit. They walked up to the house, which had lights on, but then decided to go back to the car, have breakfast and keep a firm watch on number eight until 8:30.
And at that point he and Roland opened the gate and walked up the pathway to the white stone house. They’d been quick and thorough, ever since Yves Zilber had put them on the right track.
But they had been nothing like as quick as the men who worked for Gaston Savary, the men who had arrived by helicopter and evacuated Giselle Gamoudi, and her sons, Andre and Jean-Pierre, three hours previously.
When the doorbell was answered, Andy Campese and Guy Roland faced a Frenchman who was most definitely not Colonel Gamoudi. He was about thirty years old and he wore a black leather jacket over a dark blue polo-neck sweater. His hair was cut in a short military style and he looked like a combat soldier from the First Marine Parachute Infantry Regiment, which indeed he had been until six months previously.
“No,” he said in English, almost as if he knew their native language, “Monsieur Hooks is away on business.”
“And Mrs. Hooks?”
“She and the boys are visiting her mother.”
“Can you tell us where?”
“Somewhere near Pau, I think. But I have no way of contacting her.”
“And you? Can we know who you are?”
“Just a friend.”
“Any idea when they might return?”
“Sorry.”
“Do you work with him up here in the mountains?”
“Not really. He’s just a friend.”
“Just one thing more…does Monsieur Hooks own this house?”
“I believe so. But I could not be certain.”
“Okay, sorry to have disturbed you.”
“Good-bye.”
Andy Campese was a very experienced CIA operator. And he knew for absolute certain when he had encountered one of his own kind. The French Secret Service were parked in Jacques Gamoudi’s house, there was no doubt of that. And no doubt in Campese’s mind that wherever the Colonel was, it was very, very secret indeed.
He made one more stop at the village shop and inquired whether Madame Hooks had been in residence the previous day. He was told, “She was here yesterday afternoon. I saw her meet the boys off the school bus. But I noticed they did not catch the bus this morning.”
“And Jacques?” he asked.
“Oh, we have not seen him for several months. He’s supposed to be on some kind of mountain expedition…but who knows? Maybe he doesn’t come back.”
Andy called Langley on his cell phone, and at 3:45 A.M. in Washington, he dictated a short report, detailing the fact that he was 100 percent certain Colonel Gamoudi’s residence was now under the strict control of France’s DGSE. He said he believed the family had been moved out in the middle of the night, probably in response to his own call to Yves Zilber.
“And they must have moved damned fast,” he said. “We drove straight up here from Toulouse, and they were long gone. Jacques Gamoudi himself has not been seen in the village for months. For the record, he lives at number eight Rue St.
Martin, Heas, near Gedre, Pyrenees. Postcode 65113.
“The phone is listed in the book under Hooks—05-62-92-50-66. I didn’t try it because it’s probably tapped, and there didn’t seem to be much point. I don’t even know if it’s connected. Giselle Hooks and the children were definitely here yesterday afternoon.”
While Andy and Guy Roland set off briskly down the mountains back to Toulouse, the French agent in number 8 was moving with equal speed. He hit the buttons from the house to the DGSE HQ on the outskirts of Paris and reported directly to Monsieur Gaston Savary.
“Sir,” he said. “They were here…at o-eight-thirty this morning. Two CIA agents inquiring about Colonel Gamoudi and his family. They were polite, not particularly persistent. If I had to guess, I’d say they were just trying to establish his residence here. They demanded no details, except who I was.”
“Which of course you did not tell them?”
“Of course not, sir.”
Gaston Savary stood up and walked around his office. There was, he knew, only one solution to a burgeoning problem. He tossed it around in his mind for a half hour and the facts never varied…and neither did the answer.
If the Americans know that Colonel Gamoudi was the assault commander in Riyadh, they probably also know a few other pointers to our involvement…that Hamas thug from Damascus is not a problem—he’s probably gone home already, with his troops, and will never be found, not in Syria.
The submarines are beyond detection, and anyway the French Navy does not answer to the Pentagon. I expect the U.S. government is aware of our activities in the oil market, but that’s mere coincidence.
It’s Gamoudi who’s our problem. He’s French. They have his address. And he’s plainly been identified, somehow, as the leader of the Saudi revolutionary forces.
If they catch him, he may very well be forced to admit everything.
Gaston Savary glanced at his watch. It was just before 9 A.M. He picked up the telephone, direct line to the Foreign Office on the Quai d’Orsay, and he spoke very briefly to Monsieur Pierre St. Martin, saying, briskly that he was coming to see him on a matter of grave urgency.
Savary was so locked into his own thoughts he ordered a driver to take him. This was most unusual. The Secret Service Chief always drove himself, but this time he sat in the backseat churning over in his mind the very few options he had.
When he finally walked into Monsieur St. Martin’s office, his mind was made up. He accepted a cup of coffee, served by the butler, and waited for the man to leave. He then faced the French Foreign Minister and said icily, “Pierre, I am afraid we must eliminate Jacques Gamoudi.”
CHAPTER TEN
THURSDAY, MARCH 25, 0500
NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY
Lt. Commander Ramshawe was on the encrypted line to Charlie Brooks in Riyadh. It was the final check required before Admiral Morris reported to the President that the NSA was 100 percent certain the Saudi Arabian mutiny had been led by a former French Special Forces officer from the Pyrenees, thus implica
ting France, right up to its pantalons.
And once more the wily U.S. envoy had brought home the bacon. He had spent the night in the basement of the Riyadh embassy combing through the yards of film shot by the security cameras mounted on the high walls of the embassy. The ones at the gate were too narrow in focus and did not cover the entire width of the road. But the wide-angle rotating camera, set just below the roof, covered the whole scene. Brooks had in his hand a blowup print of the convoy coming toward, then moving away. And clearly pictured was the bearded figure of Col. Jacques Gamoudi, machine gun ready, standing up in the for’ard hatch, the lead officer in the lead tank.
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