At that moment the fresh coffee arrived with, miraculously, a blue tube of Morgan’s preferred “buckshot,” the little white sweeteners that tasted like the sugar both his doctor and his wife had banned. Word had already hit the kitchens: the Big Man was in residence. It was just like old times.
Admiral Morris poured, Morgan stirred, and a slightly breathless young secretary from the Western European language department came through the door with the required dictionary.
“Let me have that, kiddo,” said Morgan, sipping gratefully. He skimmed through the first section, French — English, for the elusive word
And on page seventy-four he found it—
“And a goddamned good nickname that is,” he said. “For a tough sonofabitch French mercenary. Question is, who the hell is Le Chasseur. Better call Charlie back, Jimmy. Ask him if he thinks it’s possible that Chasseur was his nickname rather than his correct name?”
“Aye, sir.”
“That you, Charlie? Jimmy here again. We just wondered whether you thought Chasser could be a nickname rather than a real name?”
“Sure it could. I heard it more than once, but it could have been just the name he was usually called. Like Eisenhower was ‘Ike,’ Ronnie Reagan was ‘Dutch,’ John Wayne was ‘Duke.’ Sure, it might easily be a nickname.”
Ramshawe confirmed the conversation. Morgan stood up to leave. “Keep at it, guys,” he said. “Watch for the submarines, and keep checking the Brits for more on that message from the Frog in the Desert. Sounds to me like Le Chasseur might
And with that he was gone, and neither Admiral Morris nor Lt. Commander Ramshawe had the slightest doubt what they needed to accomplish next.
“Jimmy,” said Admiral Morris, “we have to establish that this Chasseur guy is a French citizen, and/or a French resident, with a French home and possibly a French wife. If we can’t establish those things, we have nothing. Not enough to point the finger at France.”
“You mean the ol’
Admiral Morris shook his head. “Exactly,” he said. “We must have sufficient evidence before we point the finger. And if this Chasseur in the front tank is really French, coupled with all the other stuff, we’ve probably got ’em.”
“What do we do? Get the CIA on the case?”
“Right now,” said Morris. “And they start in Brazzaville, where the Chasseur held high command in French Special Forces ten years ago. There must be people who remember him. There’s still a major French embassy in that city. I’d say the guys could identify him with a proper name in less than a couple of days.”
“I’ll call Langley right away,” replied Ramshawe.
Ray Sharpe had been stationed in the former capital of French Equatorial Africa for two years. Here in this swelteringly hot city on the north bank of the Congo River he had held the fort for the U.S.A. in one of the least desirable foreign postings Langley had to offer.
But Brazzaville was an intensely busy port, a hub between the Central African Republic and Cameroon to the north, the former Zaire to the east (now the Democratic Republic of Congo), and Gabon to the west. The mile-wide Congo was the longest navigable river in the whole of Africa, providing a freeway for enormous quantities of wood, rubber, and agricultural products. And an enormous amount of skulduggery. Ray Sharpe was well tuned in to the buzz of the African underworld. Sometimes he thought there was more underworld than overworld.
But today he was not stressed. For a start, it was lashing down with rain — warm rain here at the back end of the season but, nonetheless, sheeting, soaking squalls that rendered several highways impassable. Drainage right here was not precisely top of the line. But, for Africa, it was almost adequate.
He was sitting on the wide, shady veranda of the French Colonial house he rented. For a change, he was not pouring sweat — thanks to the cooling rain clouds — and he was taking a man-sized suck at his first cold beer of the evening.
Sharpe was a native of New England, south Boston, a devoted fan of the Red Sox and the Patriots. A burly black-haired Irish-American of forty-three, he had volunteered for Brazzaville mainly to escape a particularly messy divorce. All right, he probably drank too much, and his work took him away from his wife for much of the year, but he could not for the life of him understand why Melissa had to run off with some goddamned hairdresser named Marc — with a
And he was always baffled by the fact that Melissa, without mercy, had skinned him alive financially. Christ! They’d been at Boston College together, where she’d been a cheerleader, and he’d been a star tight end. Their families dated back to the same county in Ireland, Limerick. And she’d tried to nail him to the wall.
All of which conspired to turn Sharpe into a classic expatriate colonial resident — stuck out here at the ass- end of West Africa, still drinking too much, missing home, but too short of serious cash, too disillusioned, and rapidly becoming too idle to return. He had learned to speak French, and he had friends in Brazzaville, but most of them were much like himself, with big expense accounts and nowhere much to spend the money, except at restaurants and bars.
Still, great fortunes were made in places like Brazzaville — importing, exporting, buying dirt cheap, selling back to the U.S.A. or Europe. He’d seen it, he’d had opportunities, and there’d be more. But somehow he had never gotten around to making a commercial move himself. Not yet, anyway. But he’d get to it soon. Definitely.
Sharpe was just reaching into the cooler for a fresh beer when the phone rang. Who the hell was that? The beautiful chocolate-colored French waitress, Matilda, from La Brasserie in the Stanley Hotel up the street? Or maybe even Melissa, now without her faggot boyfriend, calling for more money.
“Jeez,” he muttered, walking inside to pick up the telephone.
“Sharpe,” he said, inwardly groaning at the all-too-familiar
Five minutes later he was back in his big swinging couch, staring at his notes.
For your eyes only. Sharpe’s eyes were a tad bloodshot, and it was still raining like hell, but he drained his beer, grabbed his light mackintosh, and headed his Ford Mustang out through the tree-lined boulevards of the biggest city in this old French colony, toward the modern-day French embassy on Rue Alfassa. Of course, he knew the resident secretariat extremely well — like every diplomat, spy, and journalist.
His route took him straight through the central area of Brazzaville, which was still dominated by the Elf Oil tower jutting above the skyline, a symbol of French industrial power. He never gave it much of a thought, of course, and he would probably never know how significant that building was to his evening mission.
As luck would have it, most of the French embassy staff had gone home for the evening, leaving only the famously ill-tempered Monsieur Claude Chopin on duty. Aged about ninety-four and claiming direct bloodlines with the great composer — who was, anyway, Polish — Monsieur Chopin was a stern French patriot. The Republic’s tricolor hung above his desk, next to a large portrait of General Charles de Gaulle. Old Chopin had worked here for about thirty-five years, and had spent most of those years sipping wine and griping and moaning.
He looked up and, seeing that his visitor was the American Ray Sharpe, issued what he thought was a smile but turned out to be a suppressed sneer.
Which was only a marginally polite way of asking what the hell the CIA man wanted.
“C’mon, Claude, what’s eating you, old buddy? I’m here on a simple mission. The smallest piece of
