The Traitor: A Tommy Carmellini Novel

by Stephen Coonts

  “You will try him in America? For treason?”

  “The prosecutors there would probably say that we don’t have enough evidence.”

  Papin smoked in silence. Finally he looked at Pinckney Maillard. “Do you wish to say anything?”

  “No,” Pink said. He nodded at Jake. “He’s the man.”

  “Conner worked for the Mossad,” Jake said to the French policeman. “We’ll tell them who killed her and why.”

  Papin puffed furiously, then nodded. “Bon,” he said finally. “Bon. They will see that justice is done. They have that reputation.”

  “Yes,” Jake Grafton said. He felt the ray gun in his pocket. “Indeed they do.”

  “Of course,” Inspector Papin added hastily, “you might tell them that it would be better if justice were done somewhere else. Not in France.”

  “I’ll pass that along, too.”

  Papin and Maillard left together, leaving only a few forensic men, who were busying themselves with cameras and measurements when a car rolled up and Sarah Houston got out. Gator Zantz was with her. Jake was sitting on the steps of the back entrance of the château.

  They listened in silence as Jake related the events of the morning. Amazingly, the time was only a little past noon.

  “Is Tommy going to be all right?” Sarah asked, the concern evident in her voice.

  “He has a concussion.” He told her the name of the hospital the French were taking him to. “You may go check on him, if you wish. Zantz can ride back with me in the van.”

  She didn’t say good-bye, just climbed back in the car.

  “Wear your seat belt,” Jake called. She started the engine, turned the car, and drove off.

  Grafton turned his attention to Gator, who was standing on the walkway watching two plainclothes forensic men taking photographs of the dogs, which had been shot. “Want to tell me about it?”

  “About what?” Gator asked, apparently baffled.

  “About Elizabeth Conner.”

  “What is there to tell?”

  “Why you killed her.”

  Gator looked Grafton over. Then he looked at the policemen, busy with other things. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You were selling her information that you had access to in the London office. Being a Mossad agent, she passed it to Tel Aviv. Since she was a friend of Marisa Petrou, she also gave it to her. Marisa passed it along to Henri Rodet.”

  “Got any proof of that?”

  “You had Elizabeth’s telephone number on your cell phone. We found it on your phone when you tossed it into the basket before you went into the SCIF.”

  “So I called her. That doesn’t prove I killed her,” he blustered.

  “Marisa isn’t dead. Neither is Henri Rodet. Do you seriously think Elizabeth didn’t tell Marisa the name of her source in the CIA? My God, man, she was paying you. I’ll bet you a thousand against a doughnut she told her control whom she was paying, what your job was…name, rank and serial number. Do you honestly think the Mossad doesn’t know?”

  Gator Zantz looked hastily around, right, left. He had his hands free and he was shifting his weight from foot to foot. When he looked back at Grafton the admiral was still sitting comfortably, but he had the wireless Taser in his hand—wasn’t pointing it anywhere, just holding it. Zantz stared at it, mesmerized.

  “So the question remains, Why did you kill her?”

  Zantz swallowed. Cleared his throat. Finally he said, “You don’t have enough evidence to convince a jury of anything. Speculation won’t cut it in court.”

  “I feel responsible, in a way,” the admiral mused. “I knew you had her telephone number and that was enough to initiate an internal investigation. I should have done that. If I had, Elizabeth Conner might still be alive. I thought we could investigate when things settled down. And, truthfully, I didn’t think you were so damned stupid that you’d kill somebody.”

  “My God,” Zantz declared, “she was an Israeli spy!”

  “And you’re an American traitor. If I just kill you where you stand, it’ll be no big deal, right?”

  “You wouldn’t kill me.”

  “You like to gamble. How much you want to bet?”

  Zantz just stood there looking at the admiral, breathing in and out, not saying anything.

  “Give me your diplomatic passport and embassy pass.”

  “Does this mean I’m fired?”

  “Take it any way you like.”

  Zantz thought about it for a moment, then removed both documents from his pocket. He tossed them on the ground. “How am I going to get out of France without a passport?”

  “Your problem.”

  “Now, listen here, goddamn it! I’m an American citizen, an agency employee. I’m innocent until proven guilty. You can’t treat me like dog shit.”

  Grafton shrugged. “If you like, we’ll waive your immunity. The French will probably be willing to arrest you and see if they can put together a case. You don’t have the right to remain silent in a French court—you talk or go to prison. Or we can take you back to the States and prosecute you for espionage. Who knows, maybe the Mossad will cooperate, Rodet and Marisa Petrou might be persuaded to talk, you might get a cell beside Jonathan Pollard. Or you might beat the rap.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “You really are stupid. I’ve wasted enough air on you. Scram.”

  “What?”

  “I’m giving you a running start, Zantz. Make the most of it. The Mossad will be looking for you.”

  “Are you nuts? I might defect, sell secrets to the highest bidder. Then you’ll look like a fool!”

  “What country is going to want you? Israel? France? You don’t know anything the Russians want to know and you’d be an embarrassment. You’re a problem no one needs. On the other hand, perhaps Iran—”

  “You bastard! I’ll see you in hell.”

  “No more badmouth. Beat it.” Jake pointed the weapon and squeezed the trigger. The laser beam shot out and touched Zantz on the chest. Jake released the trigger before the capacitor discharged. “Now!” he said.

  Gator Zantz turned and walked along the driveway until he disappeared around the house.

  Callie Grafton insisted on staying with Marisa Petrou in the emergency room as the nurses prepped her for surgery. One of the nurses was washing her, cleaning her up the best she could.

  One of the doctors tried to explain in poor English, and Callie asked him to switch to French.

  “Cleaning and suturing her wounds should be done in the operating room. I don’t think she is in immediate danger unless she goes into shock. She has lost a lot of blood. Still, she is young, with a strong heart.”

  “What about her face?” Being a woman, Callie had to ask.

  “I have sent for the plastic surgeon. We will see what he says.”

  “I must see Monsieur Rodet before he goes into surgery. It is urgent.”

  The doctor nodded at one of the nurses, who led Callie through the hallways to the X-ray department. Rodet was on a gurney. The bullet had ripped a gash in his side and apparently broken a rib. The staff was going to X-ray him to ensure no fragment of the bullet was in his chest. He was conscious.

  She leaned over so he could see her. The nurses were installing IVs on both arms. His face was pasty, covered with sweat. “I am Callie Grafton, Admiral Grafton’s wife. Marisa is going into surgery. The doctor was hopeful. He says she has a strong heart.”

  “Her heart…,” he whispered.

  “They are going to sedate you momentarily and operate. Before they do, you must tell me what you know of Abu Qasim.”

  “I know nothing. Those fools…”

  “When you saw him twenty-five years ago, what did he look like?”

  “Medium height, strong features, an expressive mouth, the Arab nose.”

  That was almost useless. Callie tried to maintain her composure. “How did you pass him the telephone computer?”

  “A dead drop
in Riyadh. Two years ago when the telephone first came out.”

  “And the code?”

  “Onetime pads.”

  “S’il vous plait, madame,” a nurse said. “We must X-ray him now.”

  “A moment more,” she pleaded. She touched Henri Rodet on the hand. “Where is your pad?”

  It took him a second to process it. “It’s a memo pad on my desk,” he whispered. “You must apply heat.” She had to lean over and place her ear near his mouth to hear the rest of it. “Place des Vosges…” That was all he managed, then the sedative put him under.

  Callie watched the nurses move him from the gurney to the X-ray table, then left.

  As she passed the waiting room, she glanced in and saw Sarah Houston there in earnest conversation with the attendant. She had never met her, but she knew who she was. She went in.

  “I’m Callie Grafton,” she said. “May I help?”

  “I can’t make this man understand,” Sarah explained. “He doesn’t speak English. I want to see Tommy.”

  She stood there watching as Callie and the attendant shot French back and forth at each other. The attendant made a telephone call, then shook his head.

  “Monsieur Shannon is conscious,” Callie related. “They’re moving him to a room. It’ll be a few minutes.”

  The women moved to a window. “Thanks,” Sarah said. “Bonjour is about all I can manage.”

  The two women talked desultorily, unwilling to say anything that might be overheard about the events at Rodet’s château, or even why they were in Paris.

  Soon they were on their way to see Carmellini, who was in a private room.

  I had been awake awhile and talking to the one nurse who spoke a little English when Sarah Houston and Callie Grafton walked into the room. They both looked pretty damn good, let me tell you, although they were a little fuzzy. I was having some trouble focusing my eyes. “Hey.”

  “Hey there yourself, cowboy,” Sarah said. “What have you been into this time?”

  “Got a hole in my leg. They stitched it up in the emergency room, they said. Took eight stitches. Barbed wire. They gave me another tetanus shot. I get one every year, seems like.”

  “You should get into another line of work,” Callie said, reaching for my left hand. Sarah had already latched on to my right, and her hand felt terrific.

  “No joke.”

  “Nothing else wrong?”

  “Little concussion and some bruises. I’ll be out of here in a little while.”

  “They said we couldn’t stay long. I’ll let you and Sarah chat. I’ll be in the waiting room, Sarah.”

  “Okay.”

  Callie bent over, gave me a peck on the cheek, and left.

  “Cool lady,” I told Sarah.

  “Are you really leaving the company when you get home?”

  “Yeah. I’ve had enough.”

  “Me, too, I think.”

  “You talked to Grafton?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Better do that.”

  The doctor came in and said something in French, and the nurse told Sarah she had to leave. She kissed me on the lips, then she was gone.

  Life was looking up.

  Jake Grafton was strolling aimlessly with his hands in his pockets when Pink Maillard drove up Rodet’s driveway in a government car with one of his men. “You going to stay here all day?” he called to the admiral.

  “Just thinking.”

  “Want to do it over some food?”

  “Sure.”

  Maillard told his man to take the van back to the embassy, and Jake got into the passenger seat of the car. They stopped at the inn on the Marne, across the river from Rodet’s estate. The police were working on a boat at the pier; Rodet’s, no doubt. The old man had crossed the river on the boat and someone had picked him up. It was that easy.

  “I screwed up the timing,” Jake said when they were seated, sipping on beer. “Arnaud must have found that item I wrote on the Intelink last night, a few minutes after we posted it. He didn’t waste any time. Got the old man and his thugs and charged right over there.”

  “Why didn’t your listener, Icahn, hear anything on the bugs?”

  “He was probably asleep.” Jake sighed.

  “You can’t blame yourself. These were desperate people.”

  “Shit!” Jake muttered.

  “When I first saw him,” Pink mused, “I thought that old man might be Qasim, artificially aged a little.”

  “That is a possibility,” Jake replied, “but in any event, Abu Qasim is still out there. Have you asked yourself why all these people were suddenly so interested in Rodet’s spy?”

  “The Veghel conspiracy was busted six months ago.”

  “Indeed. Six months pass, and suddenly all hell breaks loose.”

  “Breaks loose just before the heads of government of the eight largest industrial powers on the planet have a summit meeting in Paris.”

  Jake watched a couple come into the small room and seat themselves at a table beside the window so they could watch the ducks on the river. The man nodded at Grafton.

  “I think he’s here, in Paris,” Jake said to the Secret Service man. “Callie went to Professor Heger, trying to learn if there was any truth to the Abu Qasim legend. When she went back the next morning, the professor had a bullet in his head. He died while she watched.”

  “Rodet didn’t kill the professor,” Pink said. “Arnaud didn’t. The old man and his thugs had no reason to do so.”

  “What if Qasim wasn’t just the answer to her question but also the name of the killer?”

  After lunch, they went out onto the riverbank. The police had finished with the boat and taken it back across the river to Rodet’s boathouse. There was one die-hard fisherman casting into the river. It was late in the season, but he wasn’t ready to quit. Squadrons of ducks paddled furiously about, looking for food.

  “When we get back to the embassy,” Pink suggested, “perhaps you and I should go see Lancaster. He’s going to get an earful from the French politicians.”

  “Fine,” Jake said.

  “I’m tempted to call Washington and tell my boss that I recommend against the president’s participation in the G-8 summit. We can’t guarantee his safety—and the French can’t—and it’s time to admit it.”

  “The French will dispute that. Even if the president backs out, they’ll have the summit anyway with whoever comes. And, boy, will they heap the stuff on the Americans for chickening out. You know the president will come, regardless of what you tell Washington.”

  “Well, they pay me for my opinion, so I’m going to tell them. They can do as they please with it.”

  “And they will. So we’re stuck with an insoluble puzzle: What is Al Queda planning?”

  “And where does Abu Qasim fit in?”

  Callie drove. She explained to Sarah. “He said the code was onetime pads. What are those?”

  “They are pads for encrypting messages. Each sheet in the pad is intended to be used just once, then discarded. If the pad is used that way, the messages are nearly impossible to decode since the code is based on random numbers. Even if you break one, you can’t break any of the others since the code changed from message to message.”

  “He said the pad was on his desk. ‘You need to apply heat,’ he said. Is that possible?”

  “Oh, yes. The pages of the pad could be printed with invisible ink, which heat makes legible.”

  They rode the rest of the way in silence. Each woman had a lot on her mind.

  The door to the apartment in the Place des Vosges was locked. Callie pounded on the door. Finally the maid opened it a few inches.

  “There has been an automobile accident,” Callie said in French. “Monsieur Rodet and Mademoiselle Petrou are in the hospital. He asked us to bring them some clothes.”

  The maid looked at Callie, looked at Sarah, then held the door open. “Are they going to be all right?”

  “I hope so. You know the do
ctors—they will tell us nothing.”

  “Mon Dieu! Where was the accident?”

  “Uh, on the highway near the château.”

  “Oh, the traffic! People drive like maniacs. No one is safe.” She shifted gears. “Someone broke into the apartment several days ago. We are still making amends.”

  “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.