“She going to shoot you or start amputating parts?”
I tried to smile. “I hope not.”
“I’m going to need some serious help on this job,” he said, looking me straight in the eyes.
“I’m on the shit list after that adventure last year,” I replied. “I’ve been told to stay out of trouble or else.”
Grafton’s eyebrows knitted. “How come you’re still working for this outfit, anyway? A year ago you were talking about taking a banana boat south.”
“You know my tale of woe. They have me by the balls. The statute of limitations still has a couple of years to run.” Grafton knew I was referring to the felony theft charge that was shelved when I joined the agency. The fuzz didn’t catch me, you understand; my partner ratted on me. Same difference, I suppose, but a guy has to keep the record straight.
“In the Navy we didn’t have people quite so firmly in our grasp,” he said with a straight face.
I snorted. “Don’t give me that bullshit. Sounds as if you intend to jam Rodet’s nuts into a vise and crank until he screams. That’s his problem, not mine. Just what, precisely, do you want from me?”
Grafton picked up a pencil and twirled it between his fingers. “For starters, I want you to bug his flat in town and his house in the country. We’ll set up listening posts.”
I admitted those chores were in my area of expertise. “Then I want you to turn traitor. I want you to walk into DGSE headquarters and offer to sell them the Intelink.”
Okay, I am an idiot — I admit it. I accepted another assignment working for Jake Grafton! I could be on my way to fun in the sun in Iraq this very minute. God damn!
Grafton kept talking. “You and your girlfriend, Sarah Houston, are looking to make a fresh start, which would go a lot better if you had a couple million tax-free euros in your jeans. You’ll give them Intelink-S first, as proof of your bona fides. When the money is in your bank account, you’ll give them Intelink-C.” Intelink-S was a network, a government Internet, if you will, which contained information classified secret. Intelink-C was the top secret network whereby the United States and its closest allies, Britain, Australia, and Canada, shared intelligence. “You have got to be kidding!”
“I’m not.”
“In the first place, I don’t have an access code to any level of Intelink. I have never had an access code.”
“I do.”
“They change it every week. Rodet isn’t going to buy a week’s subscription.”
“He is going to buy the fact that Sarah helped design these networks, that she’s foolishly fallen for a swine like you, that at your insistence she installed a trapdoor, and that you will sell him the key.”
I thought about it. “NSA would never let Rodet peek. Ever.”
“That’s true, of course. We don’t even want Monsieur Rodet to know the type of information that is really on Intelink-S, so we’ve created a parallel, fake Intelink-S. It will look good enough to fool the French, we think. That’s what we’re going to give Rodet access to. He’ll never see the real Intelink-S, and we’ll have hooked and boated him long before it’s time to reveal Intelink-C.”
“He’ll never buy it.”
Grafton waved that away. “Corrupt people think everyone’s corrupt.
I felt nauseous. My forehead was covered in perspiration. I swabbed at the sweat and wiped my hand on my trousers. “They’re going to smell a rat. This could be the biggest intelligence debacle ever. What I’m trying to say, Admiral, is that if we live through this, we could go to prison. Like, forever.”
Now he smiled at me.
I tried to reason with him. “The frogs will be all over me like stink on a skunk. And through some tiny bureaucratic oversight, I don’t have diplomatic immunity.” I waved a hand at the door. “They gave all the embassy spots to those security people combing the crowds for terrorists going to the G-8 meeting.” I couldn’t believe I had the bad luck to fall into a mess like this. The head of the DGSE! God almighty! “If Rodet doesn’t buy what we have to sell, what then?”
The admiral turned his hand over. “The Veghel conspirators were going to blow up the New York Stock Exchange. A half dozen Middle Eastern fanatics living on welfare in the Netherlands don’t go charging off to America with passports and credit cards and traveler’s checks to rent trucks and make bombs without some serious help. Henri Rodet has some questions to answer. Our job is to convince him to do the right thing.”
“You, me and Sarah.”
Grafton grinned. “Have faith, Tommy.”
“It’s going to take more than faith, dude. No one in France is going to want us digging up smelly little secrets. Not a single solitary soul.”
“I have faith in you,” Jake Grafton said firmly.
“It’ll take a couple of weeks to scope out those two places and bug them. I’ll need a couple of vans, all the good people we can get — and I mean real damn good — and a whole lot of luck.”
“We got the vans in Italy. They are in Paris now. I’ve raided the warehouse in Langley, and they used the diplomatic pouch to send us everything I thought you might need. And we don’t have a couple of weeks.”
It took a moment for the implications of that remark to sink in. Grafton didn’t come up with this caper last night. When the guys at the very top start scheming, it’s time to run for cover. “Oh, man!”
“I want you to go to France tomorrow, rent this apartment”—he passed me a slip of paper with an address on it—“and wait for a telephone call. The caller will give you a place and time. Subtract four hours from the time. Two guys you know will pick you up in a Citroen precisely at that time. If you’re followed, don’t go there. They won’t make the meet if they are under surveillance.” He removed a cell phone from a desk drawer and slid it across the desk.
I didn’t touch it. “It’s sort of funny,” I said, “how people talk. For instance, you don’t say, ‘we want,’ you keep saying, I want.’ “
“I’m the man they gave the job to,” Grafton said curtly. “I’m responsible for results. You could assume that I’ve discussed with my superiors how I intend to get the results they want. On the other hand, if your view of my character is a little darker, you might assume that I’m some sort of idiot rogue, that if my actions wreck the Franco-American alliance, it won’t bother me. Make any assumption you like — doesn’t matter an iota. Your job is to do what I tell you to do. You can bet your ass on that. Got it?”
“I am betting my ass. That’s the problem.”
His features softened. “That’s the job, Tommy.”
“You made any arrangements to get us some luck?”
“You’re going to supply the luck. Be careful, professional. Think every move through, keep your brain engaged and don’t get sidetracked. We’ll peel the onion one layer at a time. I want to know what you’re doing and when you’re doing it and what the results are. Keep me advised, keep your eyes open and you’ll be lucky.”
The last twenty-four hours of my life had been rocky. Now, faced with the prospect of another Jake Grafton adventure, the gloom was setting in, which was why I said, “When they told me you were getting in this game, I should have bailed. I’ve had it up to fucking here with this spy shit.”
Not a muscle in Grafton’s face twitched. He should have been playing poker in Vegas instead of wasting his talent in the CIA.
“Maybe I need to do some research on the federal statute of limitations,” I muttered. “The diamonds the rat and I lifted were from a museum in the District of Columbia. That info should be online.”
“Tell you what,” Grafton replied, locking me up with those gray eyes, serious as a hangman an hour before dawn. “You help me out on this, and I promise you there’ll be no prosecution, even if you leave the agency.”
“Maybe a pardon, huh?”
“No prosecution. That’s the deal.”
I took a deep breath. “I want someone to watch my back.”
“The people I have line
d up are career professionals.” He gave me their names.
I waved the names away. “Three guys. This is a joke. We couldn’t follow Martha Stewart’s limo through Manhattan with three guys.”
“Three plus you.”
“Like I said, I want someone to watch my back.”
“Is there a reason you don’t trust these people?”
“The agency has had its troubles in Europe — hell, that’s why you’re here!” I spread my hands. He knew as well as I that any of these pros could be a mole or double agent. True, the odds were remote, but it had happened. “You don’t want this op blown and I don’t want to stop a bullet.”
“Who do you have in mind?”
“Willie Varner, my lock-shop partner.”
“He isn’t with the agency.”
“That’s one reason I trust him.”
“He’s a convicted felon.”
“Indeed he is. Willie got caught and went to the joint. Twice. I hate working with people who think they’re too smart to get caught. Willie’s careful, competent and paranoid — just my kind of guy. And he’s one more guy. Believe me, we’ll need him.”
“If he’ll come, we’ll make the arrangements.”
“I’ll offer him a free trip to a French penitentiary — he’ll be on the next plane.”
“We’ll pay him contract wages.”
Willie wouldn’t sign up for this gig if I told him what the job really was. Still, he had never been to France and was probably foolish enough to want to see it, so I wouldn’t level with him until he was here. Like Jake Grafton, I’m sort of short on scruples.
“He’s going to need a passport,” I told Grafton. “One in his own name would probably be best. He’s a good liar but there’s not much time and I need him now.”
I sat there thinking about Henri Rodet and the DGSE. Some years back the French spooks used murder and kidnappings to squash their enemies. In Algeria they used teams of assassins to take out people they didn’t like; when the assassins had done their job, the spooks blew up the hotel the assassins used as headquarters — with the assassins in it, of course. This being la belle France, after the explosion leveled the hotel someone whispered the names of the bombers to the newspapers.
If I got put through a grinder and turned into lean meat, bone meal and gristle, there was a shadow of a possibility that someday someone in the DGSE would leak the amazing facts to the press. If they did, that was probably all the epitaph I would ever get.
“I hope I don’t regret this,” I muttered.
“I just hope you live through it,” Grafton said, and smiled again.
A cold chill ran up my spine.
CHAPTER THREE
I called Willie Varner from a phone in the SCIF. Due to the time differential, I got him at home before he went to work. Way before. “Jesus Christ, Carmellini! You know what time it is?”
“Early.”
“It’s five thirty in the fuckin’ mornin’, man. You in jail or dead or what?”
“I need some help, Willie.”
“You need a new watch, that’s for sure.”
“I want you to come over to Paris and help me for a few weeks.”
“You mean, like, in France?”
“Yeah.”
A long silence. “France,” he said. I could tell he was warming to the idea.
“We’ll pay you for your time, of course,” I said casually. “All expenses covered. Nice hotel, some time off. Sort of a working vacation.”
“Doin’ what?”
“Helping me. I need some backup.”
“Backup for what?”
“I really can’t get into it on the phone. Nothing dangerous.”
“No shooters, man. Nothin’ that goes bang. No knives, neither.”
“Oh, no. Nothing like that.”
“I done my time and I done my bleedin’. Don’t want to do no more of neither one.”
“I know where you’re at. This will be cool.”
“Well…” He was seriously tempted, I could tell. “Hell, I ain’t got a passport.”
“We’ll get you one. Be a fellow around to the shop later today to take your picture and get your information. In a couple of days someone will bring you a passport and give you some tickets.”
“Goddamn! France! Okay, I’ll come. I can always boogie if things get too iffy. I’m no spring chicken, you know.” Sure.
“More like a jackrabbit. I like to screw and I can really run.”
“The airport’s open seven days a week.”
“The Folies … I heard about that! That’s what I want to see.”
“Works for me. Man will be in to see you later today.” I hung up.
Grafton was looking at me with raised eyebrows.
“He’s never been out of the country before,” I explained, “so he’s hot to trot. He’ll cool off when he gets to thinking about it, but he’ll come. I’ll keep him busy and out of trouble while he’s here.”
When he was seated at his desk in DGSE headquarters in the Conciergerie, Jean-Paul Arnaud could see the Eiffel Tower. From his large, padded swivel chair he could also see the stately walls of the Louvre and bridges all the way downriver to the Pont de la Concorde. If he were so inclined, he could watch the tourist barges, the bateaux, cruising up and down the river with their loads of sightseers, or cloud formations soaring across the skyline of Paris, clouds that had enchanted armies of artists. Jean-Paul Arnaud never looked. He sat at his desk day in and day out as the seasons changed and the sun and rain came and went, chain-smoking cigarettes as he worked. Occasionally he wrote orders, case summaries and the like; once a quarter he devoted a day to the budget battles; one afternoon a week he turned his attention to personnel matters; on Monday and Wednesday mornings he sat down with the agency head, Henri Rodet, to discuss business; and when asked, he accompanied his boss to meetings with the minister. Otherwise, Jean-Paul Arnaud sat at his desk smoking and reading reports.
So it was at his desk, while sunlight and shadow played on the great city beyond his window, that Jean-Paul Arnaud learned that Jake Grafton, now believed to be associated with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, was temporarily attached to the American embassy as a State Department employee and would soon be arriving in Paris.
And it was here, this morning, that he learned that Tommy Carmellini, CIA officer assigned to the SCS, was coming to Paris under a false passport that gave his name as Terry G. Shannon. The report noted that he would arrive in France tomorrow and rent an apartment on Rue Paradis, then speculated a bit on why he might be in Europe.
Using his pen that wrote in green ink, Arnaud made a note on the margin of the report. Keep me informed.
He tossed the form into the out basket and picked up the next one from the in basket.
After my interview with Jake Grafton, Gator Zantz gave me a ride to a hotel, the Royal Garden. I was his only passenger. “Where’s Houston?” I asked.
“She’ll be along.”
I grunted. I didn’t want to be in the same country with Sarah Houston, let alone the same hotel, not after that stunt she pulled on the airplane. Oh, well.
My hotel room was on the eighth floor. I pulled the curtains, got undressed and climbed into bed — had a devil of a time getting to sleep but eventually drifted off. Not long after that the maid began pounding on the door. I ran her off, watched television for a while, then finally went back to sleep.
A nightmare woke me up at 9:00 p.m. local time, and I lay in bed tossing and turning, unable to get comfortable. I had been trying to catch a plane, and the security people kept finding something else to check as the minutes ticked away. Then I left my watch at the checkpoint and had to run back for it… An anxiety dream. What do they mean?
Jet lag is always worse traveling east. On top of that, I was hungry.
When I realized that I was wide-awake, I showered, shaved and got dressed. Went downstairs and looked in the bar. Naw. Went outside and saw a pub just down the street. Perfect.
I don’t know about you, but I like London. It’s a great town, and the Brits are terrific. They even speak an obsolete form of English that some folks find amusing. Sitting in the pub, I ordered fish and chips and my favorite cider and submerged myself in the delightful atmosphere, surrounded by conversation and laughter as a tennis match played on the telly over the bar.
In a few minutes the world began to look better. Yeah, I had another Jake Grafton adventure ahead of me, but it was the last one. Yeah, I had woman troubles, but who doesn’t? I was munching chips and sipping cider and meditating about what I was going to do after I got out of the Christians In Action when Guess Who came into the joint.
She looked around, saw me, thought she would leave, then changed her mind and came over. I stood as she approached the table.
“May I join you?” she asked coolly, formal as hell.
“Please do.”
I enjoy the company of women — being around them, watching how they move, how they carry themselves, their gestures, listening to what they have to say, all of it — and I had really enjoyed being around this one. I wasn’t so sure I was going to like it this time.
Sarah Houston was seriously brilliant, with a quick, darting mind and a feminine presence that seemed to radiate heat. In addition, she had an erect, athletic carriage and was pretty darn good-looking. Tonight, as usual, people at other tables and at the bar had turned to watch as she walked across the room. They kept their eyes on her as she seated herself, and only reluctantly turned away.
“Couldn’t sleep?” I asked.
“No.”
Umm.
The waitress came over and Sarah ordered white wine. “I’m not hungry,” she told the young woman in jeans when she asked if Sarah wanted something to eat. The other patrons accepted us as members of the pub community and ceased to pay attention. Sarah helped herself to a small piece of fish off my plate and nibbled on it.
“Ever been to London before?” I asked, just to make conversation.
“Back in my dark days.” She meant back when she was known as Zelda Hudson and was on a holy quest to get filthy rich. I had known that and forgotten. Since we weren’t supposed to talk about Zelda, her former identity, I changed the subject.
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