They’d been driving all night, fighting their way by car up the mountains from Toulouse, the temperature dropping, and the weather worsening all the way as they climbed into the rugged high country. The 220-mile trek had taken almost seven hours, two of those hours spent on the final forty miles running southward and upward along the winding, treeless road from the town of Tarbes to Gedre.
The easiest part was finding the address of Le Chasseur. Even the local milkman, delivering early on the south side of Gedre, had known of the near-legendary mountain guide Monsieur Jacques Hooks.
In short order, Andy Campese and his colleague, a twenty-eight-year-old French-born American, Guy Roland, hit the village of Heas, entered the village store and bakery at 7:30 A.M., bought takeout coffee, a fresh warm
Almost as an afterthought, Andy reached the door and called back, “Monsieur Hooks…straight on?”
“Four houses up the street on the left. Number eight.”
Andy Campese considered he had done a very cool night’s work. And it was cool — about 34 degrees Fahrenheit. They walked up to the house, which had lights on, but then decided to go back to the car, have breakfast and keep a firm watch on number eight until 8:30.
And at that point he and Roland opened the gate and walked up the pathway to the white stone house. They’d been quick and thorough, ever since Yves Zilber had put them on the right track.
But they had been nothing like as quick as the men who worked for Gaston Savary, the men who had arrived by helicopter and evacuated Giselle Gamoudi, and her sons, Andre and Jean-Pierre, three hours previously.
When the doorbell was answered, Andy Campese and Guy Roland faced a Frenchman who was most definitely not Colonel Gamoudi. He was about thirty years old and he wore a black leather jacket over a dark blue polo-neck sweater. His hair was cut in a short military style and he looked like a combat soldier from the First Marine Parachute Infantry Regiment, which indeed he had been until six months previously.
“No,” he said in English, almost as if he knew their native language, “Monsieur Hooks is away on business.”
“And Mrs. Hooks?”
“She and the boys are visiting her mother.”
“Can you tell us where?”
“Somewhere near Pau, I think. But I have no way of contacting her.”
“And you? Can we know who you are?”
“Just a friend.”
“Any idea when they might return?”
“Sorry.”
“Do you work with him up here in the mountains?”
“Not really. He’s just a friend.”
“Just one thing more…does Monsieur Hooks own this house?”
“I believe so. But I could not be certain.”
“Okay, sorry to have disturbed you.”
“Good-bye.”
Andy Campese was a very experienced CIA operator. And he knew for absolute certain when he had encountered one of his own kind. The French Secret Service were parked in Jacques Gamoudi’s house, there was no doubt of that. And no doubt in Campese’s mind that wherever the Colonel was, it was very, very secret indeed.
He made one more stop at the village shop and inquired whether Madame Hooks had been in residence the previous day. He was told, “She was here yesterday afternoon. I saw her meet the boys off the school bus. But I noticed they did not catch the bus this morning.”
“And Jacques?” he asked.
“Oh, we have not seen him for several months. He’s supposed to be on some kind of mountain expedition… but who knows? Maybe he doesn’t come back.”
Andy called Langley on his cell phone, and at 3:45 A.M. in Washington, he dictated a short report, detailing the fact that he was 100 percent certain Colonel Gamoudi’s residence was now under the strict control of France’s DGSE. He said he believed the family had been moved out in the middle of the night, probably in response to his own call to Yves Zilber.
“And they must have moved damned fast,” he said. “We drove straight up here from Toulouse, and they were long gone. Jacques Gamoudi himself has not been seen in the village for months. For the record, he lives at number eight Rue St. Martin, Heas, near Gedre, Pyrenees. Postcode 65113.
“The phone is listed in the book under Hooks—05-62-92-50-66. I didn’t try it because it’s probably tapped, and there didn’t seem to be much point. I don’t even know if it’s connected. Giselle Hooks and the children were definitely here yesterday afternoon.”
While Andy and Guy Roland set off briskly down the mountains back to Toulouse, the French agent in number 8 was moving with equal speed. He hit the buttons from the house to the DGSE HQ on the outskirts of Paris and reported directly to Monsieur Gaston Savary.
“Sir,” he said. “They were here…at o-eight-thirty this morning. Two CIA agents inquiring about Colonel Gamoudi and his family. They were polite, not particularly persistent. If I had to guess, I’d say they were just trying to establish his residence here. They demanded no details, except who I was.”
“Which of course you did not tell them?”
“Of course not, sir.”
Gaston Savary stood up and walked around his office. There was, he knew, only one solution to a burgeoning problem. He tossed it around in his mind for a half hour and the facts never varied…and neither did the answer.
Gaston Savary glanced at his watch. It was just before 9 A.M. He picked up the telephone, direct line to the Foreign Office on the Quai d’Orsay, and he spoke very briefly to Monsieur Pierre St. Martin, saying, briskly that he was coming to see him on a matter of grave urgency.
Savary was so locked into his own thoughts he ordered a driver to take him. This was most unusual. The Secret Service Chief always drove himself, but this time he sat in the backseat churning over in his mind the very few options he had.
When he finally walked into Monsieur St. Martin’s office, his mind was made up. He accepted a cup of coffee, served by the butler, and waited for the man to leave. He then faced the French Foreign Minister and said icily, “Pierre, I am afraid we must eliminate Jacques Gamoudi.”
CHAPTER TEN
Lt. Commander Ramshawe was on the encrypted line to Charlie Brooks in Riyadh. It was the final check required before Admiral Morris reported to the President that the NSA was 100 percent certain the Saudi Arabian mutiny had been led by a former French Special Forces officer from the Pyrenees, thus implicating France, right up
