I was a European citizen visiting Dubai. What plausible business could I have at the US Consulate? Request a visa? European passport holders don’t need a visa to enter the US for ninety days.
Back in my room, I got a message from Eric: Total market change. These were code words for Security breached. Leave immediately. Don’t use this computer until it’s cleared.
I stuffed my computer and a few essentials into my briefcase, leaving behind my small suitcase and the rest of my clothing, and walked outside. To disguise my departure, I didn’t check out of the hotel. I entered an Internet café nearby and prepared a benign-looking e-mail to Eric’s Gmail address, hinting about a possible source of the threat: Maybe the trouble started with my son. I’ll go and see how he is doing.
I went to the airport, changing cabs twice. After I was fairly confident that I wasn’t being shadowed, and was sure that no surveillance cameras saw me, I wiped my gun clean and dumped it in a trash can—and caught the next flight to Paris.
VIII
January 2007, Paris
I went straight to “my apartment” in the 12th arrondissement. It was occupied by André, a French student paying low rent to live there and pose as my son. The Agency subsidized the rent through an accommodating but unknowing French real-estate agent. I’d recognize André from the photos in my Sheep Dip. André was supposed to recognize me from “family” photos that the Agency gave the realtor to decorate the apartment.
Like a lot of apartments in the area, the ceilings were low, with ancient wood beams; a balcony looked out onto the standard Parisian courtyard. My framed photos—landscape shots of my “home” country, which could be anywhere in Europe—were on the wall, and my clothes and other personal belongings were in the closets. “This apartment is still under 1948 rent control laws,” was the legend that the realtor had offered as to why André had to pose as my son, when all he wanted was to rent a cheap apartment advertised in the newspaper. “Monsieur needs to maintain and support the fact that he’s never abandoned his residence, although he now travels constantly and is there only a few times a year, since a member of his immediate family lives in the apartment,” the realtor had explained.
André hadn’t seemed to care. Why should he? A furnished apartment, well below market price, with two bedrooms and an absentee landlord who visited twice or three times a year for two or three days?
“There are other conditions,” the realtor had told him at the time. “When Monsieur Van der Hoff comes to Paris, he must sleep at the apartment, and you must introduce him as your father if you ever meet a third person.” André had obviously agreed. For all he cared, presumably, I could be a drug dealer, although I’m sure he hoped I wasn’t a serial killer.
When I used my key and entered the apartment, André wasn’t in. I looked around, trying to figure out whether my security contamination had started here. I went through André’s things. There was nothing suspicious. I found all the trappings you’d expect from a senior at the Sorbonne, including philosophy books, an iPod, and a small quantity of weed wrapped in a foil paper. One thing that surprised me, though, was women’s clothing hung in the closet and makeup accessories in the bedroom. A woman was staying here, I realized. It was a clear violation of the agreement with André. As I sat on the living room sofa, the door opened and André walked in with a young woman. Both were dressed in black. The woman was smoking a cigarette, fouling the room with smoke. André seemed surprised to see me.
“Bonjour, André, mon petit,” I said and hugged him. The woman looked at André in anticipation for an introduction.
I moved first and gave her my hand, “Hi, I’m Jaap, André’s father. He wasn’t expecting me,” I said in French with a broad smile.
“Monica,” she said and took off her dark sunglasses, revealing deep blue eyes. She had wavy, black hair, probably dyed; fair skin; a long, almost horsey face; and multiple piercings in each ear. Even so, she was attractive enough. She appeared to be twenty-six or twenty-seven years old, dressed in a tight black miniskirt and heels. So, André prefers older women, I thought; he was only twenty-two.
“Monica is my friend,” said André. “She’s from Germany, so let’s talk in English, her French isn’t that great.”
I thanked André in my heart, because my French was also wobbly.
“Sorry I didn’t call you earlier, but my plans have changed, so I decided to see how you were doing.”
“I’m fine,” André continued with the charade, but I sensed he had to make an effort. Realizing I had noticed that Monica was living in the apartment without my permission, he said, “Oh, Monica is staying here for a few days, I hope you don’t mind.”
With my earlier cursory review of the apartment, I’d already figured out that Monica had installed herself there.
“You know the rule,” I said, “Even for a few days, I must report to the landlord whoever is living here, or face eviction from an apartment that your grandfather first rented decades ago.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, realizing that he was caught red-handed.
“I need a copy of Monica’s passport, and her full home address,” I said. That was bull, of course, but it created an opportunity to run a background on Monica. They didn’t react.
“It’s a little early, perhaps, but please let me take you both out to dinner,” I suggested, “and we can find a place to photocopy her passport.” Monica seemed disturbed a tad. Apparently, she wasn’t aware of the reporting requirement, or maybe she felt uneasy that André had never mentioned her to me.
We dined at La Table du Marquis, a simple, excellent restaurant just a few steps down the street. The place served rustic French food, and André and Monica split a bottle of Bordeaux. After dinner we walked to a nearby all-night copy center, and I asked Monica for her passport.
She hesitated for a moment and started digging in her purse.
“I’m afraid I don’t have it here,” she said. I don’t always know if people are telling the truth, but this one sounded like an outright lie.
“Please look again,” I said. “I hate to say it, but you can’t stay at the apartment unless I report you to the landlord.”
She let out a sigh, “Let me see again.”
I followed her hands with my eyes, and I saw the red cover of her German passport—she was clearly trying to cover it with her hands, doing a sloppy job. I said, pointing, “There it is.”
Reluctantly she gave me the passport. I asked her for her home address.
“Salvador-Allende Str. 1320, 12559 Berlin, Germany,” she said.
I copied her passport; Monica Mann was born in 1984, making her twenty-two years old. She doesn’t look twenty-two, no way, said my inner little devil. He was right, I looked at Monica again. She looked much older than twenty-two.
There are exceptions of course, but in most cases, the first gut feeling is the correct feeling. That was another maxim by Alex, my Mossad Academy instructor. He must have paraphrased another Moscow Rule: Never go against your gut; it is your operational antenna. Here, I knew he was probably right. I scanned the copies of Monica’s passport and e-mailed them to Eric from the copy center’s computer via a European pass-through e-mail address: Notification to landlord of temporary guest at 1359, rue Beccaria, 75012 Paris, France. Monica Mann, home address: Salvador-Allende Str. 1320, 12559 Berlin, Germany.
Eric did not expect any “temporary guest” in my Paris apartment serving only as an accommodation address. He would check her out.
We returned to the apartment. I went to sleep in “my” bedroom while André and Monica slept in his. I was bothered and jet-lagged, but managed to sleep deeply sleep until garbage truck noises woke me up at an early hour. Not sure why, but being wakened by a garbage truck in Paris was preferable to being wakened by one in New York—the trucks in Paris seemed gentler, somehow. Or maybe it was the city itself. Paris was daintier than New York, trimmed with cornices. Between the two cities, I always thought of New York as the man—impressive, con
crete, a solid grid—and Paris as the woman, exquisite with her narrow streets, late lunches, and pink afternoon light. I left the apartment quietly, found a patisserie with croissants au chocolat fresh out of the oven; and got a copy of Le Monde. When I returned to the apartment, André was sipping coffee from a mug and getting ready to go out.
“Where’s Monica?” I asked. “I wanted to say good-bye, I’m leaving soon,” I said nonchalantly. “Is she a student at the Sorbonne as well?”
“Oh, she just left to run some errands,” he said as he went to the door. “No, she’s an art student in Germany and travels in Europe taking photos of old buildings to prepare her thesis. We met when she arrived in Paris. She was looking for a place to stay, and I invited her to stay here. I’m sorry I didn’t ask for your permission, I thought it was necessary only for a sublet, not for occasional guests.”
“The thing is, the landlord watches me like a hawk. He’s looking for any violation to evict me, so he can charge a new tenant a much higher rent.”
“I’m sorry,” he said again.
“At any rate, I’m leaving in a few hours.”
I was bothered, but couldn’t pinpoint why, exactly. As soon as André left, I bolted the door and went to André’s room. It was still a complete mess, just like my own son’s at that age. Sneakers strewn on the floor, a half-eaten croissant on the nightstand, fallen stacks of textbooks. I searched his closet and dresser and found nothing. Then I went through Monica’s clothing. Other than some black garters and kinky underwear, all looked innocuous. I sat on the bed and looked around. I moved the prints on the wall—two Klimt reproductions—and found nothing but dust. You’re a paranoid, said my inner little devil, but keep on looking, even paranoids are sometimes right. Under the bed I found a big suitcase, but it contained only shoes, some leather pumps, and high-heeled boots.
As I pushed the suitcase back under the bed, though, it was stopped by something. I turned the lights on and could see a floorboard slightly raised; its edge was stopping the suitcase. I pushed the bed aside. I found a screwdriver in the kitchen and used its edge to lift the board. Fuck. Was it?
Yes.
Sitting in a cavity under the floorboard was an FN Five-seveN pistol. The Five-seveN from FN Herstal is a single-action gun with a 5.7x28mm caliber, with a range of 2,100 feet, nicknamed “cop killer” because it easily penetrates body armor. I pulled the gun out using a towel, careful not to smudge or to add any prints. The Five-seveN is made of lightweight polymer, I knew that, but I was still surprised at how light it felt. In all my work with Mossad and CIA, I’d never held or even seen one up close before. So what the hell would a Sorbonne student be doing with a “cop killer”?
Or maybe the gun was Monica’s? It was so light. The perfect gun for a woman, perhaps? Under the gun sat a plastic bag. Inside were two passports, seven credit cards, three driver’s licenses, and a wad of euro bills, at least €10,000—approximately $12,000. There was a note attached: Pension 1 for December. I examined the passports: one German, one Swiss, and one Austrian. All passports and driver licenses had Monica’s photo, and a DOB of June 12, 1978, in East Berlin, when it was still part of the Communist Democratic Republic of Germany. However, the names on the passports and driver’s licenses were different; Gertrud Maria Schmitz, Marita Klara Haas, and Alexandra Emma Bayer.
Ha! She is twenty-eight, not twenty-two, I told my inner little devil. You were right. On the other hand, maybe these dates of birth were fake like the documents. I took snapshots with my digital camera, but had to make a quick decision: be satisfied with the snapshots or run to the copy center, risking that Monica would return to the apartment. I opted for the latter. I quickly collected the passports, the driver’s licenses, and credit cards; put the floorboard back in place; and ran to the door. I stopped. What if the gun is also Monica’s?
I returned to the bedroom, pried up the floorboard again, recovered the gun and its magazine, and put back the board. I copied the serial number of the gun and hid the gun under my coat, then went to the copy center and quickly scanned the documents and sent them to three different e-mail addresses, one for each passport. Since my notebook computer’s encryption facility could have been compromised, I again used the copy center’s public Internet access. For additional safety, I used the Agency’s innocuous-looking e-mail boxes in Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo: I attach a copy of my son’s new live-in girlfriend’s passport, please ask the travel agent to see if a work visa could be issued. I sent a fourth e-mail with the gun’s serial number without explanation. The fifth e-mail went to a different address. It just said, Look what I found in my son’s apartment, a serial number.
I returned to the apartment. Thankfully, it was still empty. I returned everything back the way it was, left the apartment, and called Eric’s mobile from a payphone. I hung up immediately, though, realizing that it was still night in Washington.
As I walked away, I heard the phone ring. It was Eric.
“Dan?” I heard his almost metal-sounding voice.
“Sorry I woke you up.”
“You didn’t. Any developments?”
I quickly reported my findings. “This is serious,” I said, “The woman is either a criminal or a drunk.” I used our preassigned code names for a terrorist. Under the rules, using both words meant high probability. “Her association with my son and my experience in the Temple,” I said, using the code name for Dubai, “tend toward the latter option.”
“OK,” said Eric, “I’ll have the office run her aliases and see if she’s on our watch list.” He hung up before I managed to say anything else.
Until the Agency responded with the background check, I decided to put a temporary watch on the apartment. I looked for a good observation post, preferably on the opposite side of the street. The best I could do was a café diagonally across from the apartment. Here in Paris, I told myself, that’s what people with time to spend do—sit in cafés. I’d blend right in, taking my time with a very long lunch and a very large bottle of mineral water.
Watching and waiting are different in different countries. Here in France, of course, they would necessarily involve food. I had a seat and ordered. I had to decide whether to talk to Monica some more without arousing her suspicion, and considered my options as Paris bustled past. I could smell lamb sizzling from the kitchen. The waiter quickly brought out my meal: lamb merguez and fresh greens. That smell made me think of the outdoor market in Dubai, the succulent lamb shawarma. Yes, Dubai: if Monica worked for FOE and was on my tail, then she could be the one who realized I wasn’t André’s father or the electronics trader I pretended to be. Maybe she knew I was an undercover US government agent; that would explain how I was exposed in Dubai.
If that were the case, then who was Monica working for? My true affiliation was confidential. If discovered, it meant that “someone” had an interest in finding out, and also that “someone” gave Monica this information for a purpose. The purpose could very well mean that I had become a target.
I felt hot all of a sudden, and loosened my tie, and touched my pocket. My gun was not there. I panicked for a moment until I remembered dumping it into a trash can in the men’s bathroom in Dubai airport. I never thought that I’d need a gun in Paris. As I bit into a sausage, a blue Renault stopped next to the apartment building and Monica came out. I quickly wrote down the license plate number but couldn’t identify the driver. All I could see was the head of a man with black hair and dark glasses.
Time to renew an old friendship. I called Pierre Perot, an agent with Direction Centrale des Renseignements Généraux, the Central Directorate of General Intelligence, often called RG. Sitting in a Parisian café, how could I not think of Pierre? I’d worked with him on two separate cases a few years back. Pierre was easygoing in that utterly French way: he loved a good bottle of French wine (not Italian); he loved a two-hour lunch with said wine; and he loved daytime sex—not necessarily with his wife—after imbibing said wine. He also had a thing for Gauloise cigarett
es. I remember him saying once that the “ladies first” courtesy was created by men to give them another opportunity to appreciate the woman’s ass, then he smiled wickedly, his Gauloise smoldering off his bottom lip, his intelligent eyes slanted. There always seemed to be a Gauloise hanging off his bottom lip. Although he’d sworn to me last time I saw him that he was quitting for good.
Other than those infractions, he was a smart and efficient agent.
“Hello, Dan,” he said in his strong French accent. “Comment allez-vous? How are you?”
After going through the niceties, I asked him to identify the owner of the blue Renault and gave him the plate number.
“Dan, are you at that age already?” he asked.
“What age?”
“They say that when men get older, they increase their interest in cars as their interest in sex declines.” This was vintage Pierre—of course he would ask about sex.
“Far from it,” I said, trying to figure out if he was nevertheless right. Remembering my more-frequent-than-usual activity between the covers last month, and my complete indifference to what kinds of cars I drove (as long as they were big), assured me that I was still not at “that age.” Then I thought he had a point. I had grown older, because now I chose my cereal for the fiber, not the toy.
“I need the information for a business purpose.”
He was professional enough not to ask any further questions. I was cutting corners here. I wasn’t supposed to get in touch with the French government other than through “appropriate” bureaucratic channels. Which could take a week, easy. But the discovery of the gun and the multiple passports was ominous, and for me that was sufficient grounds to cut to the chase.
“We must have lunch together,” Pierre said. It would be my second lunch of the day. Anything, well, almost anything, for the mission.
An hour later I met him at Café de Flore, a nineteenth-century establishment once frequented by artists and writers such as Jean-Paul Sartre.
Defection Games (Dan Gordon Intelligence Thrillers) Page 8