“A real shack,” Rich Thurlow said. “The Department of Defense sent us some satellite photos of the place.” He opened a briefcase and handed me the file.
There were seven photos, all marked SECRET NOFORN in caps, and the detail was amazing. One of the things looked as if it had been taken in infrared. I studied the hot spots.
There were actually eight buildings on the grounds. The main house and two smaller ones looked as if they were occupied; perhaps one of the smaller buildings was for servants, guards or in-laws. One structure appeared to be a barn, one a garage, and the others might have been used for storage of some type. There was a pool and a tennis court. And a dog pen.
I couldn’t help myself — I whistled in amazement. “This guy is worth serious bucks,” I said.
“The end result of prayer and clean living, I suspect,” Salazar muttered.
I handed the photos back to Thurlow and got out of the car. Below us was a dock with some rowboats tied to it. Upriver two men were fishing from a boat that looked as if it had come from the collection below. They were fly-fishing as they drifted.
Across the river, on Rodet’s side, there was no fence. I suspected he didn’t need one. Salazar saw where I was looking and handed me a set of binoculars. The view was fair even though most of the trees still had some of their leaves. Sure enough, I could see several — at least three — surveillance cameras mounted in the trees. No doubt there were also infrared sensors and motion detectors. I suspected that an uninvited guest wouldn’t be there long before he became personally acquainted with the dogs.
“Well, heck,” I said. “We’re here, so let’s do the tourist thing, go in and sample the local chow.”
“Cuisine,” Thurlow said, correcting me. “This is France, remember.”
“You say that like Bob Roll does. It’s France, my man, through your nose. France.”
“I’ll work on that. You and Al get something to eat. I’m not hungry.” Thurlow popped open the trunk of the car and reached for his rod case. “I’m going to dip a hook and see if anything wants to bite it.”
The inn looked old, although I didn’t think it was. It was decorator old, and the toilets really flushed. After I visited the facilities, Al and I were led to a table overlooking the river. This being a weekday, the place wasn’t crowded. In the summer and on weekends, a fisherman should probably pack a sandwich.
Al had little to say. Nor was he interested in the view of Rodet’s estate. Everyone around me these days seemed to be adrift.
As I looked over the menu, I thought about Sarah Houston.
Aaugh!
Marisa Petrou glanced right and left along the sidewalk before she entered the restaurant. It was a small place, very discreet, in which each party had its own private nook, free from the observation of other diners. The exquisite food and unique physical layout made the establishment a favorite rendezvous for married men and their mistresses, and for married women and their lovers. Part of the charm of the place was the fact that the diners never knew who was in the other nooks, be they politicians, celebrities, neighbors, or, perhaps, spouses.
Marisa was quickly escorted to a nook in the back of the restaurant. The man waiting there stood and embraced her. Behind her, the maitre d’ closed the drapes.
“It is good to see you again,” the man said.
He helped her with her chair and, when he was again seated, poured her a glass of wine. He raised his glass to her. After they each had a sip, he said, “So what message have you today?”
“All preparations are complete. The security teams from the various nations are arriving within the next few days. The city will be covered with heavily armed security personnel.”
“As we planned.”
“Yes.” Marisa had another sip of wine. “Oh, the American CIA has sent a new director of European Operations, a retired American admiral named Grafton. One of the men with him is a man named Tommy Carmellini, who is using the name Terry Shannon. Carmellini knows me, by the way. We met in Washington last spring.”
“How did you meet?”
“A party.” She brushed it away. “Grafton arrived now, Henri believes, to assist the American Secret Service with security. The Secret Service team will arrive next week. No doubt he will make an appointment to see Henri in the near future.”
The man beside her merely nodded.
After a moment he said, “Nothing else?”
“No.”
“These meetings are dangerous…,” he said, and left the rest of the thought unspoken.
There was a knock; then the drapes opened. The waiter entered, discussed the menu, took their luncheon orders and departed, closing the drapes behind him.
“I wanted to see you,” Marisa said, when the silence had gone on too long, “to ask you to reconsider.”
“My enemies are closing in,” the man said slowly. “This is my time, my mission.”
“And when you are gone?”
“Others will pick up the sword. They also have their duty to God.”
Marisa sipped wine. “I have never shared your vision of God and duty.”
“But you have helped anyway.”
“A DGSE man was murdered the other evening. Did he have to die?”
“Henri must be protected.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“Yes, I did. In any war there are casualties.”
“So this is the last time I will see you?”
“Unless Henri has a message. He understands the risk involved in face-to-face meetings.”
“And I don’t? Me, a mere woman?”
The man said nothing.
“I wish, for my sake, that I shared your vision of God and duty and obedience to the word of the Prophet. But I don’t. I think you are making a great mistake, and when you stand before the throne of God, He will judge you harshly.”
“You blaspheme.”
“Perhaps. I will stand there, too, one day, and He will judge me then. I am afraid I shall have many sins to answer for.”
With that she seized her purse and rose from her chair. He put out his hand to stop her, but she drew away.
“Good-bye,” she said, and, defying the rules of the house, she parted the drapes and departed without an escort.
On my third day in Paris, we put magnetic signs that advertised a plumbing concern on the side of the surveillance van and parked it on the Place des Vosges in front of the old houses undergoing restoration. We lucked out — I could see four of Rodet’s windows from the passenger seat. I scrambled into the back of the van and turned everything on.
The tech support guys had done some serious work on this van in Rome. It had a white dome on the roof, which didn’t look like anything much. It was merely aluminum bent and pounded into shape, then painted white. The interior of the dome, however, was painted black. Under it was a laser and a sophisticated telescope, also painted black. The dome could be manually raised two inches and latched there, then the laser radiated through the gap. It was simple and effective; anyone standing on the sidewalk would never notice the gap between the dome and the van roof.
The laser was aimed at a windowpane, which vibrated from a variety of causes, including sound and wind. Aimed at the vibrating spot of laser light, the telescope focused the image upon a sensor that converted the microscopic movement of the spot into digital signals; a computer processed those signals into sound. The system did not use the reflection of the laser beam, so the angle of incidence was not critical. Amazingly, in perfect atmospheric conditions, the system had a theoretical maximum range of three miles. All one needed was 1 window — and a wizard, someone who understood the system and could wring human speech from all the other sounds that vibrated le glass, such as traffic in the square, a television inside the building, a washing machine in the basement, planes going by overhead, and soon.
Our wizard was Cliff Icahn. I had worked with him last year for a few weeks in Berlin, and he knew his stuff. He looked sour this mor
ning. “We’re not going to hear anything,” he grumped. “There’s too damn much noise. I’m no miracle worker.”
I spend my life in the company of optimists. “Well, let’s try it awhile,” I told him from my perch on a toolbox near the back doors of the vehicle. We had tools, pipe elbows, brazing equipment and the like stacked there to display to a policeman, should one demand to look inside the vehicle. Between it and the laser was a solid wall of shelving, most of it made of balsa wood to save weight. “If we don’t, we can’t keep you here. You’ll have to go on home.”
That comment dried up his objections. Cliff and his wife didn’t get along, which was the reason he volunteered for every overseas job that came along. He spent more time out of the United States than he did in it. I didn’t know why they stayed married, and I had no intention of asking.
He diddled with the telescope for a moment, ensured the solid-state accelerometers were working and allowing the computer to compensate for the movement of the van, then turned his attention to the computer. When he eliminated all the extraneous noise, we hoped we would be left with voices. It was a Saturday morning, so who could say? From where I sat I could see tourists wandering along, looking at the buildings. I looked for young or middle-aged men who were interested in people, not buildings. Saw one, finally, who did nothing but sit on a bench and watch people.
Finally Cliff said, “I’ve still got a buzz that comes and goes.”
“Vacuum cleaner?”
“Maybe. I’m going to take it out… if I can.”
Sixty seconds later he stated, “Now I can’t hear a damn thing.”
One explanation for this phenomenon, if the equipment was functioning correctly and Cliff had tweaked it properly, was that there was nothing to hear. I refrained from stating the obvious. Outside, halfway across the square, the watcher I had spotted a few minutes ago lit a cigarette. So far he hadn’t even glanced at the van.
I got out of the van on the side away from the watcher, crossed the street, and started hiking.
I walked the sidewalks around the square, which were protected from the weather by the overhang of the floors above. There were shops, artists selling paintings, people in casual clothes and people dressed fit to kill. Women pushed strollers along. A derelict wearing a long coat and a brimmed hat sat on one bench.
I was a half block from the door of Rodet’s building when a limo stopped in front of it. The chauffeur got out and opened the rear door on the sidewalk side. The woman who emerged was in high heels, hose, an obviously high-fashion dress, and a fur jacket. Brown hair combed so one ear was exposed. I got a glimpse of her face, but she didn’t see me. Marisa Petrou!
She used a key on the door to the building, then disappeared into it. The chauffeur got back behind the wheel of the limo and rolled.
When I got back in the van, I asked Cliff, “What have you heard?”
“The maid likes American pop tunes.”
“There’s hope for the world after all.”
“Someone came in a while ago. A woman. The maids turned off their boom box. The woman inspected the place, told the maids to do the toilets again. No names.”
Our watcher was still in his seat. I pointed him out to Cliff. “That guy. Scan his face. Put him in our database and send the image to Langley via satellite. I want to know who he is.”
The face scanner was another digital toy. If the computer placed points on the captured image of a face, then measured the distance etween those points, thereby converting the scanned face to a series of digits. Amazingly, faces are like fingerprints, each unique.
It took only a few seconds for Cliff to aim the scanner, focus it and capture the image. The computer did the rest, including sending the lcrypted digital signal to Langley via satellite for comparison with the agency’s database.
We had our answer in six minutes: the man’s name and the fact that he was a DGSE agent.
The derelict huddled in his coat on the park bench watched Tommy Carmellini circle the square. The brim of his hat was turned down all around his head, and it obscured much of his face.
He hadn’t been paying any attention to the plumber’s van until the athletic young man got out of it. Now he scrutinized it carefully. He could see the white hump on the roof, yet due to the angle from which he observed, he did not notice the space between it and the roof of the van. Still, the athletic man with the wide shoulders and narrow waist was obviously not a plumber, so that made the van suspicious.
The derelict shifted his weight… and eased the hard mass of the pistol in his coat pocket so it didn’t press against him.
My little garret on the Rue Paradis looked pretty good, let me tell you. I even liked the neighborhood. There were women standing around on the sidewalk at all hours, and they always smiled at me. I smiled right back. Those ladies were the friendliest people in France, by golly. The men I saw weren’t so friendly; they tried hard to avoid eye contact, apparently on the theory that if they didn’t acknowledge your presence, you wouldn’t notice theirs. I always looked carefully at their faces, trying to decide if I had seen them before. Of course, any agency watching me would probably be smart enough to pay a few of these women, but bureaucrats being bureaucrats, who knew?
It rained the night after I saw Marisa, a gentle, steady soaker. I lay in bed listening to the rain patter on the windowpane and gurgle in the downspout right outside the window. The gurgling was nice and loud because I had the window open a couple of inches. The ventilation cooled the room and made it very pleasant for sleeping.
Paris and Baghdad were so different that I wondered if I were still on the same planet. Man, I thought just before I drifted off to sleep, I could get used to this.
On Thursday I walked around Paris for a while, just checking my tail, and finally boarded the Metro and rode out to the airport. I bought a couple of Snickers bars at an airport candy shop, then rented a car, a little four-seater. The sky was cloudy and there was a cool breeze from the west. The trees were in full color. An hour after I left the airport I pulled into the inn on the Marne, across the river from Rodet’s humble shack, got out and looked across the river, then went inside and got something to eat.
After my meal I drove to the bridge and crossed to Rodet’s side. I explored the neighborhood and drove along the road that ran the length of his estate on the landward side. I found the power line that went across the fence, a chain-link with barbed wire on top, and slowed down for a look at the main gate. It was a two-piece affair that looked as if it were triggered by a wireless transmitter, such as a garage-door opener.
On the side of the road away from the river was a forest, with occasional driveways that led to small cabins. The ones I could see looked empty. Weekend getaways, I thought.
I was going to go in with nowhere near enough information. I had told Grafton that, to be safe, I needed two weeks of observation to ensure I knew the size and composition of the household and had a good idea of their routine. “We can’t wait,” he said. “The sooner the better.”
Willie Varner was arriving on Saturday, so we settled on Sunday night. I would just have to play it by ear, do the best I could.
I drove around the neighborhood for almost an hour, checking on where each road went. If I had to boogie, I wanted to know where I was boogying off to.
Finally I pointed the car back for Paris. I found a place to park the thing, in a garage only a few blocks from my apartment, and rode the Metro to the Place des Vosges.
The van was parked in a slightly different place, surrounded by traffic cones. I knocked on the driver’s door. Alberto Salazar opened it and whispered, “We don’t want any. Beat it, bub.”
I joined Cliff and Al inside. “Good thing we’re all friends,” Cliff muttered, squeezing himself over to make room.
“Whaddaya hear?”
“Both maids have dates for the weekend,” Al told me. “One of them is meeting an old boyfriend for dinner tonight, then going out with him tomorrow night. She hopes her
current fellow doesn’t find out.”
“Hot stuff, eh?”
“Sizzling.”
“What about Rodet?”
“The woman who came in had a telephone conversation with someone. We only heard her side of it. It might have been Rodet. She said something about dinner. It’s hard to say, but I sorta convinced myself that she’s his girlfriend or something, and he’s coming there after work this evening.”
“So he’s in town?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. Someone is coming for dinner. I didn’t hear her say a name. Do you know who she is?”
“Yes. Her name is Marisa Petrou.”
“Want to tell us how you learned that?” Cliff asked.
“No.”
“It’s a mushroom deal,” Rich Thurlow told Cliff.
“Just do your job,” I shot back. “I want everything you can get between Petrou and Rodet. At least one of you must stay on duty all the time he is there.”
“We can’t hear any conversation except those that occur in rooms facing the square.”
I knew that, of course. Not wanting to waste the afternoon listening to them bitch, I climbed out of the van, made sure the door locked behind me, and headed for the Metro.
I had to figure out how to get into that flat.
Al Salazar was the only guy in the van at the Place des Vosges when I stopped by that evening. “Catching anything?” I asked.
“Not even a cold. The man went in, and they talked in the kitchen and maybe the bedroom. I got kitchen noises and occasional words. I have no idea what they talked about.”
“You make a disk?”
“Sure.”
Well, maybe the wizards in Washington could figure out what was said, if they cared. I used a set of binoculars to scan for a watcher. Didn’t see anyone.
Al got up and stretched. “Remember in Baghdad, when those two guys with rifles got out of that car?”
“Let’s talk about something else.”
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