enemies take the day off.”
“Very true,” Cooke said as he sat in one of the gray armchairs.
Stansfield leaned back into the couch. “What can I help you with?”
Cooke clasped his hands in front of his chin and seemed to consider where he should start. After another moment and a sharp inhalation, he said, “This thing in Paris . . . it’s causing quite a stir.”
Stansfield nodded. He wasn’t a big talker and wasn’t about to expand on the obvious.
Several long moments passed before Cooke continued, saying, “I had a strange meeting yesterday.” He looked out the window as if he was unsure of how to proceed.
Stansfield gave him nothing more than a slight nod that told him he was welcome to continue. If Cooke had a story to tell, he was going to have to do it on his own.
“Franklin Wilson asked me over to his house.”
The often overwrought secretary of state had undergone some type of reformation since his wife’s decline in health. As far as Stansfield understood it, Cooke and Wilson barely knew each other. Asking Cooke to meet him at his house was a little odd. “On a Saturday afternoon?”
“Yes, I know.” Cooke played along as if he thought it was all a little bizarre himself. “He is very upset about this Paris thing.”
“A lot of people are upset about what happened in Paris . . . none more so than the Libyans and the French. Why is our secretary of state so distressed?”
“He’s upset because he thinks you’re not being honest with him.” Cooke studied Stansfield for a hint of nervousness, but the old granite bastard didn’t give him so much as a twitch. “Does that concern you?”
“I learned a long time ago, Paul, that I can’t control what people say or do in this town. Franklin Wilson is a very opinionated man, who has been acting a bit strange since he institutionalized his wife. If he has a reason to be upset with me, he can pick up the phone and tell me himself.”
Cooke crossed his legs and then uncrossed them. He would have to tell Wilson exactly what Stansfield had said about his wife. Maybe even play it up a bit. If the man had a hard-on for Stansfield now, he was going to want to gang-rape him after he heard this. “It goes a little deeper than that,” Cooke said. He cleared his throat and then added, “He thinks you were involved in what happened the other night.”
“The other night meaning . . .”
“Paris.”
Stansfield stared back at him without saying a word.
“You don’t have anything you’d like to say?” Cooke asked.
“I’ve found it best not to respond to wild accusations.”
“Well,” Cooke said with a big exhalation, “I’m just trying to give you a little heads-up. The man has the president’s ear, for God’s sake, and for some reason he thinks you were involved in the assassination of the Libyan oil minister.”
“And he came to this belief how?”
“He wouldn’t say.”
“Interesting.”
“That’s your response?” Cooke asked, making no attempt to hide his frustration. “That is a very serious accusation. You’re not going to deny it?”
Stansfield studied Cooke for a long moment. He sensed something that he didn’t like. Cooke was fishing, and he got the specific feeling that Wilson had put him up to it. With the director’s office open down the hall, who knew what delusions of grandeur were floating through people’s heads these days. Cooke did not have the analytical abilities to run Langley, but he could certainly see Wilson waving the job in front of his face to get him to do his bidding. “Paul, you should remind the secretary that we’re all on the same team, and he should probably think twice before he starts throwing around wild accusations that could seriously harm this country and our foreign policy.”
“So you had nothing to do with what happened the other night?”
Cooke might not have known it at the time, but Stansfield could see that a line had been drawn. Any Langley man who was dumb enough to be a messenger for the State Department was dangerous. Stansfield looked Cooke straight in the eyes and said, “I had nothing to do with it. Are you satisfied?”
Cooke accepted the answer even though he knew it was a lie. “Well.” He slapped his knees and stood. “I’m heading over to Paris in the morning. See if I can help smooth things over.”
“What exactly do you have to smooth over?”
“That might be the wrong choice of words. I want to reassure our allies that we had nothing to do with this.” Cooke started for the door and when he reached it, he looked back to Stansfield and said, “You’re more than welcome to join me if you’d like.”
Stansfield took the invitation with a reasonable nod. “I’ll think about it. I’d have to move a few things around, but it might be worth the trip. It’s been a while since I paid a visit to our friends at the DGSE.”
“Good.” Cooke left the office, closing the door behind him, a satisfied grin on his face.
Stansfield sat motionless for a minute or so, running the various possibilities through his head. Any way he looked at it, he didn’t like what he sensed. The old spy’s strength was his ability to take facts, plug in a person’s motivation, and predict what he was after. Cooke was up to something. Stansfield considered the possibility that he had underestimated the man. He very quickly concluded that there was a good possibility that he had. Frowning, he decided that he would have to move quickly to deal with the situation. He ran down a list of trusted operatives he could call on. There were no files for these men; all of them were retired yet still very useful. Stansfield decided on an asset and then asked himself if he should have a talk with Marvin Land. Stansfield and Land had a great deal of
