“We have heard rumors, yes, dozens of them. No doubt your agency has also heard them, or similar ones. But credible information, no.”
“Thanks for lunch,” Grafton said, and walked out. He closed the door behind him.
I took a cab back to my place and unlocked the Vespa. I needed to lower the frustration level. I had had it up to here with spies and excons who couldn’t follow a beer truck to a bar.
I went buzzing off, still stewing. The day was clouding up, so maybe it would rain. That would be the perfect ending to this day, let me tell you.
I was sitting at a stoplight, the little Vespa mumbling under my butt, when I realized that there were two really tan black-haired guys sitting in an old pale blue sedan in the next lane, and they were looking me over. This was not the late-model, dark sedan that had followed me to the museum. The paint on the car was chipped and sun-bleached. The tires were bald, the muffler sounded as if it were shot and a faint cloud of noxious smoke was spewing from the tailpipe. The third world had arrived in Paris.
The light changed and I goosed my ride. I putted off, riding between cars, right down the lane stripe, just the way we used to do it back in California. This maneuver left the grungy blue car behind.
Two lights later I was sure I’d lost them. I turned left and headed over to the embassy.
Grafton was down in the SCIF in the basement, staring at the photo of Rodet’s country home, which he had taped to the side of a file cabinet. Beside it was a photo taken from a helicopter or airplane of Rodet’s apartment building in town.
He gave me his full attention when I told him about my morning and produced my camera. “I would like to see if the CIA can match the photos of these women and the guy who followed me with anyone in the database.”
Grafton palmed the camera and examined it. “Tell me about the men who followed you.”
I did. I also told him about the old blue sedan I saw at the light and gave him the plate number of that car, too. “I think they’re friends of that asshole I threw through the clock.”
“But you don’t know?”
“No.”
“The guys who followed you to the museum—they knew you made them?”
“Sure.”
Grafton sat down and idly examined the camera.
“I think Marisa and Conner are Israeli agents,” I told him. “That code that NSA was interested in this spring might have been used by Marisa, not her father, Lamoreux. The Sum of All Fears could have been the key. And Conner has a copy.”
“It’s possible,” Grafton admitted.
“Maybe you should share this possibility with your buddy Rodet.”
“Not yet.”
“He might be surprised.”
“I doubt it.”
I guess I gaped. “You think he knows?”
Grafton’s eyebrows rose and fell, and he gave a minuscule shrug.
I lost it. “Jesus, Admiral, I’m trying to do you a good job and you don’t tell me where you are!”
“I’m sorry, Tommy. The truth is I’m trying to figure out the puzzle myself.”
That took the air out of my sails.
Grafton pointed at the photos on the wall. “Take a good look at those photos and tell me if there is anything unusual about them.”
I did as he requested. That helped me get my blood pressure and heart rate back under control. My voice was absolutely normal when I said, “Look pretty innocuous to me.”
“See the satellite television dishes. There’s one on the château and one on the apartment building.”
“Un-huh.”
“I want you to go into Rodet’s apartment and inspect that system.”
“Okay.”
“As soon as possible,” he added.
“Want to tell me what I’m looking for?”
“I want to know how Rodet talks to his agent. The guys at NSA say it’s technically possible to transmit encoded transmissions via the dish to the satellite, which will rebroadcast them. Anyone with another dish can pick the transmissions up. They will appear as a burst of static on the video or audio channels. With the right equipment, the static can be separated out into the coded message. The spooks like this method of broadcasting encoded traffic because it uses a low-powered ultrawide band signal. They say it’s a good LPI signal—that’s a low probability of intercept. Each party needs only a computer, one small transceiver, some plug-in cables, and a satellite dish.” Grafton pointed at the photos. “Rodet’s got the dishes, anyway. You see if you can find the other stuff.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Be careful, Tommy.”
“I’ll get Willie to back me up. If I find the stuff, what do you want me to do with it?”
“If you can lay hands on the computer, I want the hard drive. If you can’t find it, I want to know if the transceiver is there. They tell me the transceiver can be pretty small, about the size of a cell phone. Just get me some kind of confirmation or tell me I’m barking up the wrong tree.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Thanks, Tommy,” he said.
I got up to leave. “By the way, Sarah around?”
“Next door.”
“I thought I’d just stop in for a minute and say hi,” I explained.
“Oh, sure.”
The uniformed policeman in his kepi strolled along checking every vehicle parked around the Place des Vosges. He took his time, checked the license plate, made a note and moved on to the next. It wasn’t long before he arrived at the plumbing van parked against the inner square. He looked at the plate, then went around the front to inspect the parking authorization that was taped to the windshield. That’s when Alberto Salazar saw him.
“Uh-oh. A cop,” he said to Rich Thurlow. “Checking the front.”
“Think he’ll figure out that authorization is a forgery?”
“He might.”
“What are we going to do if he pounds on the door?”
“We sit tight, he’ll call a tow truck to haul this damn thing off.”
As they debated the issue, the policeman came to the side door and rapped sharply upon it. It was locked.
“Okay, Rich,” Al said. “You speak French. Get out there and schmooze him or jump in the driver’s seat.”
“I figure he’ll jaw a while, and then we can leave,” Rich said. “We’ll want to park here later. We’ll do another sticker. I’d better talk to him.”
“A command decision,” Al said sourly. “Go to it.” The policeman rapped sharply on the van while he and Rich rigged blankets over the gear and computers so they couldn’t be seen. The job took about thirty seconds, no more.
“Okay, open it,” Al said.
Rich did so.
The policeman looked startled when the door slid back. He stepped right to the opening and looked past Rich to Al and the blankets.
Rich was trying to get out of the van, but the policeman stood in the way. As Rich launched into his monologue, the cop looked to his right and left, then pulled his pistol and shot Rich in the head.
There wasn’t much noise. The pistol had a silencer attached to the barrel, so the report was just a pop. The impact of the bullet on Rich’s head catapulted him backward into the van.
Before Al Salazar could react to what he was seeing, the cop had turned the pistol is his direction. A bullet hit him in the forehead before his brain recognized the muzzle flash for what it was. He died instantly.
The policeman shot each man in the head one more time, then holstered his weapon and pulled the van door shut. He walked on along the street, inspecting vehicles, until he got to the corner, then he walked out of the square.
When I left the embassy I had some of the stuff I would need for tonight, but I needed some of the gear that was in my backpack, which I had stashed in the trunk of the rental. I putted over to the Rue Paradis, parked the Vespa and walked three blocks, keeping my eyes open for watchers. Didn’t see anyone.
The car was on the second floor of the parking garage.
I looked around carefully as I walked up to it.
I was about to push the button on the key fob that would unlock the trunk when a little voice whispered in my ear. Something just walked on my grave.
I didn’t push the button. I stood looking at the rental, wondering.
There was a greasy fingerprint on the driver’s side window. I stood looking at it, trying to recall if I had had greasy or oily hands when I drove this thing.
Little cold chills ran up and down my spine, tiny fingers of fear.
I walked as far away as I could get and still see the car. This was about fifty feet.
Hunkered down behind another vehicle, I raised the key fob over the fender, pointed it at my ride, and pushed the button.
Nothing happened.
Okay, I’m getting paranoid. Losing my courage as I get older. Another year or two of this crap and I won’t be worth a nickel to anyone.
I stood up, started toward the car.
Of course, the lights didn’t flash when I pushed the button—maybe I was too far away.
What the hey. I hunkered down behind a car about fifteen feet away, raised the key fob and pushed the button again.
This time the lights flashed and the horn gave a tiny beep. Bonjour, buddy. Let’s go for a ride.
I felt like a fool. I stood up, scratched my head and looked around to see if anyone had watched my shenanigans. No one had.
Well, you can’t be too careful in this business. There are old spies and bold spies, but there ain’t no old, bold spies.
I had taken two steps toward the car when it blew up.
The heat and concussion bowled me over backward. That probably saved my life. The air was filled with flying pieces, which were bouncing off the roof and other vehicles and ricocheting around. Not to mention the fire and heat. I didn’t wait for things to settle down—I crawled away as fast as I could go.
Once the heat and fire seemed to dissipate, I scrambled to my feet and ran. When I got to the end of the bay, I looked back.
The smoke was so thick I had to wait to be able to see. After a few seconds the visibility improved somewhat. The bomb had been under the driver’s compartment. The engine and front wheels were still there, blackened and twisted, but the rest of the car was rubble, and some of it was on fire. The roof of the parking garage was scorched black and the adjacent cars looked like they had been smashed by a runaway semi. The fuel in the tank had apparently helped feed the explosion, which had been a dilly.
An inventory of my own sensitive parts showed that all was still intact.
Talk about luck!
The next thought that occurred to me was that I didn’t want to spend the evening visiting with the local police. I boogied.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I Vespaed back to the embassy and asked around for Grafton. He was in a meeting with the Secret Service top banana, but he motioned for me to join them. After the introductions, I told them about my car.
“You weren’t hurt?” Grafton asked, scrutinizing me carefully.
“I’m all right. I think the local jihadists are out to get me.”
He didn’t comment on that, so I continued, “The police are going to snag me sooner or later. Seeing as how I’m running around town without diplomatic immunity, you had better be thinking about what you want me to tell them.” I regretted that remark five minutes later, but it felt good when I said it.
Grafton just nodded. He was calm. Too calm. His manner offended me somewhat. It wasn’t his fault that someone wanted me dead, but still, I was a little peeved, and, I guess, surly.
I stomped off to the cafeteria and had some dinner and real coffee while one of George Goldberg’s flunkies hunted up equipment to replace the stuff that had been in the trunk of the deceased rental car. I wondered what the Paris police would say if they found enough of that equipment to figure out what it was.
Pinckney Maillard didn’t say a word until he and Grafton were alone, then he said, “I have heard that Carmellini is a thief. Do you really trust him?”
Jake Grafton smiled. “With my life. And I have done just that.”
Maillard zigged away in another direction. “A car bomb, the murder of a DGSE agent in the streets, Muslim thugs attacking one of our people in a museum—I have to include all this in my report to Washington.”
“So do I,” Jake said without inflection.
“I also have to brief Ambassador Lancaster,” Maillard said. “All these incidents will go into the assessment of whether or not it is safe for the president to attend the G-8 conference.”
“Which will be presented to the president,” Grafton said, “who will decide if he will attend.”
“That’s right. In the interim Lancaster will be discussing these incidents with the French government. He’ll be making his own recommendation to the State Department. I expect he’ll want to talk to you before he talks to the French.”
“I expect you’re right,” Jake said, and sighed.
After dinner, feeling somewhat better and wearing my new backpack, I rode over to Willie’s hotel and called him from the lobby. Woke him up. Resting up for a night on the town, I suppose.
“Hey, dude. We’re going out among them tonight. Get up and get dressed. I’m down in the lobby.”
“You don’t really mean that, do you?”
“We have to work.”
He said a dirty word and hung up on me. I picked up a newspaper and settled into a soft chair. My hands were still shaking from the adrenaline overdose, so the paper was hard to read. Still, I couldn’t miss the big story about the guy who went through the museum clock. A reporter had been to see the family, who were Palestinians. They didn’t speak French, although they said their late son was learning. They denied he was a terrorist or criminal: He was a victim, they said. The authorities were lying to protect someone. The paper had a photo of the family and a photo of the recently deceased from happier times.
I flipped over to the sports, which were soccer and tennis and what the bicycle racers were doing in the off-season. I was trying to get interested when I realized the bellboy was eyeing me from the door. Another dark, Middle Eastern type.
Maybe I was getting paranoid. Every Arab I met wasn’t planning on doing the martyr trick or looking for a throat to slit. Still, I felt like a cowboy in Comanche country. Was it racial bias? Was I a bigot, in this day and age? I felt guilty. On the other hand, someone had put a bomb in the rental and I was the fish they hoped to fry.
Of all the wonderful folks I had met in Paris, who might the guilty party be? The French Muslims? Marisa Petrou? Elizabeth Conner? Henri Rodet? The person or persons unknown who killed Claude Bruguiere? I was trying to decide when the elevator door opened and Willie Varner stepped into the lobby.
He looked around, saw me, and headed for a chair. I hopped up and headed him off. He looked tired and worn out, and it seemed as if he had lost a little weight. Not that he had a lot to lose.
“Maybe you’re hitting it too hard,” I told him.
“I can rest up when I get home.”
When he saw the Vespa and realized that it was our ride, he groaned. “Oh, Tommy, plee-ease!”
I laughed, and he started cussing me.
Okay, the Wire still had it. He wasn’t over the hill yet.
Maybe I should have told him about the car, but I didn’t. No use prematurely elevating his adrenaline level. The way things were going, he might need all the juice he had before this mess was over.
Jake Grafton ate dinner with Callie in their Paris apartment. Due to the possibility that the apartment was bugged, they never discussed anything of any import there. Sometimes that habit made for quiet dinners, like this evening. He had a lot to think about.
Had Tommy ticked off the local Muslim fanatics by tossing one of their flock through the museum clock? Were they out to even the score with Tommy, or had they decided to declare war on every CIA officer in France? Or were the locals following orders from Al Queda? How probable was it th
at events were building toward an attempt on the life of the American president? Or another of the G-8 leaders? Or all of them? Should the president come to France or stay in the United States?
“Come on,” he told Callie as she finished the last of her dinner. “Let’s you and I go for a stroll.”
Callie asked no questions, merely began cleaning up.
Seven minutes later, they locked the door behind them.
There was still plenty of light in the evening sky when we rode away from the hotel on the Vespa, which was working hard to carry two men. Although Willie doesn’t weigh 120 pounds dressed, I’m not small. Willie wore the backpack, and he had a devil of a time staying on the seat behind me. The problem was that he didn’t want to hold on to me and there wasn’t much else to grab on to. In Italy the girls sit sideways behind their guy and hold on to him lightly with one hand, if they hold on at all; they just sort of perch there.
Willie wasn’t perching. He finally latched on to my belt with both hands in a death grip. If he went, I was going, too. Of course, we were only going about ten miles per hour at the time.
At the second stoplight two motorcycles turned and fell in behind me, one in the right rear and one in the left. The riders were wearing full-face visors on their helmets, so I couldn’t see any facial features. They didn’t look like big men, though. Medium size, maybe 140 or 150 pounds, lean and wiry, dressed in jeans, motorcycle jackets and leather gloves. They were mounted on Japanese bikes, apparently ones with decent engines. They could ride circles around our scooter with those things.
They stayed behind us, just following along as we rode through heavy traffic and stopped at each light.
When I putted away from the third light, dragging those two along in formation, I said to Willie, “At the next light, bail off. I’ll pick you up right here in an hour.”
“What’s wrong?”
“We have company,” I replied, and for the first time I felt him turn to look back.
He didn’t say anything, and the scooter was coming to a halt, he vaulted off the end. Willie Varner dishes out a lot of bullshit, yet when the chips are down, he’s a guy you want in your corner. I watched him walk over to the sidewalk and turn, cross his arms, and look at the two dudes. The motorcyclists shot each other a look and stayed on their bikes. Willie’s move had been unexpected, yet it was me they were after.
The Traitor: A Tommy Carmellini Novel Page 20