“Think nothing of it! We will find what they need. Do you have a suitcase?”
The maid scurried off to look. Callie and Sarah went looking for Rodet’s office.
The maids had been working on it, but only half the room was cleaned down to the floor. Callie and Sarah glanced at the desk, opened the drawers… and Sarah pulled out a curling iron, its cord wrapped around it.
“Look at this.”
They rooted through the stuff strewn about on the floor and came up with three memo pads, in three different colors.
Sarah was ready to plug in the iron to test them when they heard the maid coming along the hallway. Callie pocketed all three pads.
“Keep looking,” she murmured to Sarah. “Look for more pads.”
But they could do no more looking. The maid entered the room with a small valise, then led them to the bedroom. While the maid was bent over opening the valise, Sarah passed Callie the curling iron. She took it and the pads and went into the bathroom.
With the door locked, it took but a moment to warm the iron and pass a sheet of memo paper through it. Nothing happened with a sheet from the first pad. Nor the second. Callie was sure none of the pads was the right one when letters and numbers began to appear on the top sheet of the third.
With the valise full of toiletries and nightclothes for Rodet and Marisa, the women thanked the maid profusely and departed.
Back in the car, Callie showed the pad to Sarah.
“Hidden in plain sight,” Sarah muttered.
“Can the messages on the telephone-computer hard drive be decoded with these?” Callie asked.
“No. These were for future messages. See the gummed backing sticking out? Rodet tore off each sheet as he used it, then destroyed it. He could have burned it, flushed it down a commode, or wadded it up and eaten it. The pages are water soluble.”
Callie said a cuss word. She looked at the pad dubiously.
“Won’t hurt to have them,” Sarah continued. “If there is another message, we can read it.”
“There won’t be any more messages,” Callie said bitterly. She smacked the steering wheel with her hand. “And I thought we were getting somewhere!”
“If we had an identical pad, the entire pad, with copies of the missing sheets,” Sarah told her, “then we could read them.”
Callie found Jake in his cubbyhole office in the embassy, with the lights off, his feet on the desk and a cold washcloth on his forehead. He had finished a session with Ambassador Owen Lancaster a half hour ago and it had not been pleasant.
Callie snapped on the lights and tossed the pad onto the desk. Jake put his feet on the floor and set the washcloth aside. He picked up the pad and looked at it, then put on his glasses and looked again carefully.
“Where’d you get this?”
She told him, and pulled up one of the two chairs.
“Rodet told you where it was?”
“Yes.”
“And it was on his desk in his apartment?”
“It was on the floor beside the desk. Along with two other pads, both of which appear to be simple memo pads.”
“Huh.”
“That wasn’t the best part. In a drawer of the desk we found this.” She passed him the curling iron.
“In a drawer?”
“Yes. It was there. Sarah and I found it.”
He snorted, raised his glasses to his forehead and sat looking around. Then he got up and went to the only window, which looked into the courtyard at the back of the building. He stood there for a moment, lost in thought. Finally he turned to Callie and smiled. “You sure know how to cure a headache, woman. Come on, let’s go get some dinner.”
“What are you thinking?”
“That I’ve been a fool! And you’ve showed me the path out of the wilderness. I need to think some more on this, but in the meantime, let’s celebrate! I want some good food and music and your smile.”
Callie was baffled. “Why don’t you tell me what you’re thinking?”
He grinned at her, took her lightly by the elbow and raised her from the chair. He kissed her cheek. “All in good time, beautiful lady. All in good time. Come! Let’s find Pink Maillard and George Goldberg and take them to dinner.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
On Sunday morning Callie took Jake to the hospital where the casualties from the shootout at Rodet’s estates had been taken. After much talking, they were admitted to post-op. The policeman outside the ward refused to let them in, so Jake demanded that he call Inspector Papin, which he finally did. After a few sentences in French, he handed his cell phone to Jake.
“Bonjour, Inspector. This is Admiral Grafton.”
“Good morning, Admiral. I spent a few minutes with Mademoiselle Petrou earlier this morning, immediately after she awoke. Her statement was exactly as you and I discussed yesterday. Such a tragedy!”
“Yes, isn’t it? I understand she is very ill, but I need to ask her a few questions myself. I, too, have superiors I must please.”
“Of course. Let me talk to the policeman again.”
Jake passed the telephone back. He and Callie were admitted to the ward and shown to the bed where Marisa Petrou lay. She was covered in bandages, but she was conscious.
Callie did the talking, in French. “I’m Callie Grafton, and this is my husband, Admiral Jake Grafton. Do you know who he is?”
“Yes.”
“Can you tell us what happened yesterday? Everything you can remember.”
“We were having breakfast, and Jean-Paul Arnaud came. He went into the study and talked to Henri. I heard them arguing, but I could not hear what they were saying. They were in there a few minutes—“
“Did Henri make any telephone calls?”
“He might have. I don’t know.”
“Did Arnaud leave the study?”
“No. I heard a vehicle drive up and glanced out the window. I saw these men getting out, an old man and some others. Four or five, I think. They had weapons. I ran into the study and told Henri and Jean-Paul, but before they could do anything the men rushed into the house — the outside door must have been unlocked. Henri had a pistol, and they took it from him. They gagged me and Jean-Paul and took us to the apartment over the garage. They tied us up, began beating Henri and Jean-Paul, demanding to know what Henri had told… your husband. ‘Tell us what you told Grafton. Where is Abu Qasim? Who is he now? We want that traitor!’”
“What did Henri say?”
“He told them the truth, that he knew nothing. He knew Qasim years ago, but not now. He couldn’t tell them what he doesn’t know, and they refused to believe. One of them began cutting on me, trying to force Henri to talk.”
She paused here, swallowing, perspiring as it all came flooding back.
“I could feel the knife. Amazingly, it didn’t hurt so much, but I knew what he was doing, butchering me. I tried to scream— couldn’t breathe, fought the gag—” She paused again, swallowed, collected herself. “The old one, the one that did the talking, said Jean-Paul had been paid. He had betrayed them. Failed. Then the old man shot him. I heard the shot, a pop. I knew then that they intended to kill us, Henri and me, so it didn’t matter … didn’t matter… what they did — did to me.”
She lay there immobile, rigid, staring at the ceiling, as her IVs dripped and the squiggly lines danced across the screen of the heart monitor beside the bed.
“I passed out. I don’t remember any more.”
Callie translated all this for Jake, whispering so her voice wouldn’t carry. He listened, looking at Marisa or watching the heart monitor. Once he reached out and touched an IV bottle.
Callie asked Jake, “Why didn’t the bugs pick up Rodet and Arnaud in the study?”
“Rodet found the bugs and moved them, I suspect.” He made a gesture of dismissal. “That’s enough. She’s told us all she can.” He reached down and found Marisa’s hand and squeezed it gently. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Truly sorry.” Then he led the way fro
m the room.
Callie lingered a moment, then bent over the bed, whispered that she would be back in a day or two, and followed her husband.
When the doctors came around that Sunday morning, I talked to them about leaving the hospital, and of course they hemmed and hawed. French is a good language to do that in, I discovered. I whispered a few old Anglo-Saxon words I happened to know and resigned myself to my fate.
About midmorning, Willie Varner came sailing in.
“Carmellini, you idiot, I told you to be careful.”
“It’s Shannon. Terry Shannon.”
“You know I can’t remember stuff like that. How smart do you think I am, anyway?”
We discussed that at some length, then he said, “Lucky for you that bullet hit that damn night vision thing. If it had hit your hard little head, it would have cracked it like an egg. Maybe even punched a hole in it. I tell you, Tommy, you’re wearin’ out your luck.”
“Don’t I know it.”
“You gonna eat that crossaint-thing there on your tray? Well, I guess not or you’da already done it, huh? You ain’t got nothin’ contagious, I don’t reckon, ‘cept stupidity, and that’s been goin’ around forever. Fought it off a few times my own self. Mind if I scarf that thing down?”
“Be my guest.”
“I hope Grafton’s got this mess all figured out,” Willie said with his mouth full. “Man, I don’t know what the game is! Truth is, I don’t even know who’s playin’. Of course, nobody tells me nothin’.”
“You don’t have a need to know, Willie,” I said. “Got that problem myself.”
He was running his mouth, talking trash, when Jake Grafton came by. The admiral shook hands with both of us and asked me how I was doing.
“Okay. Ready to go, but the doctors said I have to stay another day.”
“Are you dizzy?”
“No.”
“Double vision?”
“No. Honestly, I’m fine. Just had a whack on the noodle. Got some bruises and I’m mighty sore. They took eight stitches in my leg, bandaged it up and gave me some shots.” I tried to flip back the sheet to show him my bandage.
“I don’t want to see it,” Willie declared. “You keep that thing under the covers.” He said to the admiral, “He’ll be okay. His head’s pretty hard.”
I asked Grafton about ol’ Henri. He had a few dozen stitches and a broken rib, Grafton said. He and Callie had checked on Rodet and Marisa before he stopped by to see me. Marisa was conscious and talking, and the doctors said her prognosis was good.
“None of this has hit the papers yet,” Grafton said. “The French government is keeping the lid on. They want the G-8 summit to go as planned.”
“I figured,” I admitted. “The first priority is to look good. But I want to know which of these bastards iced Elizabeth Conner.”
“What would you do if you knew?” Grafton asked.
There must have been an edge in my voice, because as I was mulling an answer, Willie put his two cents in. “Don’t tell ‘im! Don’t tell ‘im. He don’t need no more shit to tote through life.”
“I just want to know, that’s all,” I insisted.
What Grafton might have said I don’t know, because just then Callie came in. Turns out she had been talking to the doctors in French. She shook her head from side to side at Jake, who obviously had something on his mind.
“Well, you’ve laid around here long enough,” he said to me. “Get dressed. Doctors or no doctors, we have work to do. You can check yourself out.”
Uh-oh. Saddle and ride. “Where are we going?”
“I need some help. You can come, too, Willie.”
“Sure. I got nothing to do until tonight,” Willie replied, a comment Grafton ignored. With Willie the Wire, you have to ignore things.
I wasn’t as enthused as Willie. Sarah was going to stop by later. I was sorta looking forward to holding her hand and soaking up some sympathy. There isn’t much sympathy in the world these days— you’ve got to get it where you can, when you can.
Willie and Grafton wandered off to the lobby. I got out of bed and put on my ripped pants and dirty shirt and stinky socks while Callie stood in the hallway having an earnest discussion with the staff. I was so damned stiff and sore that getting dressed took several minutes.
There was some difficulty about the bill; Grafton whipped out a credit card. After a while, I scribbled my name a few times and they gave me some pills to take four times a day. Then we were escorted to the street.
“If you’ve got anything important in mind, I’d like to take a bath and change clothes,” I told the admiral. He was downwind of me, so he knew how it was.
He didn’t care.
“Later,” he said, and led the way to his car.
“So what’s the gig?” Willie asked when we were rolling along with Grafton at the wheel.
“We’re going back out to Rodet’s estate on the Marne,” Grafton told us. “Yesterday afternoon Callie and Sarah Houston searched the apartment on the Place des Vosges and found a onetime pad written with invisible ink that had been sitting in plain sight on Rodet’s desk.”
“It was lying in the trash beside the desk,” Callie said. “And we found a curling iron in one of the desk drawers.”
“What’s a onetime pad?” Willie asked.
Callie told him, even passed him the one she had found. He looked it over and passed it back.
“So why are we searching today?” Willie asked.
Grafton tilted the rearview mirror so he could see my face, then asked, looking at me, “Doesn’t it strike you as strange that someone searched Rodet’s apartment from top to bottom — ransacked it — and didn’t find that pad? With the curling iron right there in the desk drawer?”
“Well…”
“If you had found that iron in an office drawer, what would you have thought, Tommy?”
“Heat. Ink. But maybe they just missed it.”
“Maybe,” Grafton agreed.
“Why not go back there and see what else we can find?”
“I’d thought we’d do the country place first. You may have to get us in.”
“Oh, man!” Willie said dramatically. “Breakin and enterin’. The last time I got out of the joint I promised my ol’ mama that I’d never do that again.”
He was lying, of course. His mother died when he was a teenager. I laid my head back against the headrest and tried to sleep as Willie entertained the Graftons.
Rancho Rodet looked properly somnolent that warm, sunny Monday morning. It should, since the old man and his thugs had killed a maid and the gardener, who doubled as the outside security guy and fed the dogs. They didn’t have any dogs left, either, which almost brought a tear to my eye, but not quite. And no cops in sight.
Grafton handed me my backpack; he had rescued it yesterday from the police after I passed out. I went to work on the back-door lock while he and Callie and Willie stood by the car looking around like tourists. Innocent tourists.
Opening it took a while. My headache had subsided to a buzz, yet I was a little shaky and, truthfully, a bit dizzy. I kept trying one pick after another. Finally I paused, wiped my head and took a deep breath, then started all over again with the pick I had first started with. Got it that time.
After Callie and Willie went in, Grafton told me to sit down for a minute. I plopped down right on the step. He sat down beside me.
“How you doing?” he asked.
“Okay. Want to tell me what you hope to find?”
“I’ve got a theory,” he said. “I want to prove it or disprove it.”
“Uh-huh.”
But he didn’t explain, merely got up and went inside. I wiped my face and levered myself erect.
Each of us took a room. We took that house apart. Looked everywhere, in everything, examined everything. One of the first things I found was an electromagnetic sweep set in an aluminum case; no doubt Rodet used it to check the house for bugs. Terrific.
We f
ound a lot of dry pens, receipts from years ago, old photos, dust balls in places the maids obviously hadn’t visited in years. It was hard, dismal work and got us exactly nowhere. We took pictures off the wall and cut the backing off. We rolled up carpets, examined the baseboards, disassembled radios and televisions, flipped through every book on the shelves — and ol’ Henri had a lot of books. I wondered if he had read them all.
In midafternoon Callie fixed us something to eat. We only had three rooms left to do at that point, two bedrooms and a kitchen.
“Tommy, why don’t you tackle the barns?” Jake said.
He didn’t have to say it twice. I gobbled the rest of my sandwich and went outside.
The big barn smelled of horses, yet it was empty. A few flies buzzed on that warm, late autumn day, and a couple of cats slunk around.
There weren’t a lot of places to hide anything in that barn. I looked under the walkway. Cobwebs and dirt, a pathway for the cats. No human had ever crawled under there.
I went over the ground floor inch by inch. I probed the cans that held the horse feed with a shovel handle. Obviously it would have helped if Grafton had told us what he was looking for, but I sort of figured he didn’t know. My impression was that he was feeling his way along, which bothered me. I confess, I didn’t understand what Arnaud or Rodet had been up to, nor why Rodet didn’t share what he knew about Qasim. I had a few theories of my own. I thought Arnaud killed Al and Rich so the old man and his Islamic gang could sack Rodet’s apartment in peace. But if that was true, why did the old man kill Arnaud? Did he think he double-crossed him and the cause?
A ladder led up to the loft. I climbed it and inspected the loft as carefully as I could in the poor light. There were no electric lights up here, merely daylight coming through air vents overhead. Bird droppings were splattered everywhere.
There was hay in square bales, a lot of it. Moving all those bales didn’t appeal to me. Not by myself, anyway. Some old saddles and tack, really old. Horse-drawn equipment that ought to be worth some money at an antique store. A couple of wood-burning stoves that I looked in. One of them was filled with rusty wire. I pulled it all out.
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