to its
And once more the wily U.S. envoy had brought home the bacon. He had spent the night in the basement of the Riyadh embassy combing through the yards of film shot by the security cameras mounted on the high walls of the embassy. The ones at the gate were too narrow in focus and did not cover the entire width of the road. But the wide-angle rotating camera, set just below the roof, covered the whole scene. Brooks had in his hand a blowup print of the convoy coming toward, then moving away. And clearly pictured was the bearded figure of Col. Jacques Gamoudi, machine gun ready, standing up in the for’ard hatch, the lead officer in the lead tank.
The embassy camera had even shot pictures of the Colonel in an unmistakable gesture of urgency, beckoning to the vehicles in the rear. Above him could be seen a lone helicopter, the one that circled before the Chinooks, the one bearing General Rashood. Unhappily for the United States, the camera could not see inside that copter.
Charlie Brooks told Ramshawe the photographs were on their way via the National Surveillance Office, and there was no question in his mind: the assault commander was the same man who had liberated the U.S. embassy in Brazzaville — Le Chasseur.
“Hey, Charlie,” said Ramshawe, “I was just going to call you anyway. We got a name for your guy. Does Maj. Jacques Gamoudi mean anything to you?”
“Gamoudi,” said Brooks. “Give me a minute…” He tried to remember those final hours in Brazzaville, the final days when the city was almost destroyed. The scene of chaos and terror was still real to him. He could still hear in his mind the gunshots, and if he thought hard, he could still smell the burning rubber of the upturned cars in the street. He had seen the severed heads on the antennae, watched the fury of the mob from behind the embassy walls.
He tried to recall the first time he ever saw Le Chasseur, the morning the French Special Forces came bursting through the embassy gates. There was gunfire outside, but the lunatic bloodlust of the revolutionaries was no match for the steady, trained fire of the French troops who drove them off.
But then he remembered: one of the French combat soldiers, the one driving the evacuation truck, had been hit as he climbed down from the cab. Brooks could see it in his mind — the man lurching in through the gates, blood pouring from a wound in his leg. Somehow, after eleven years, he had cast that image from his subconscious. But now he remembered the French trooper going down, falling, and then getting up again. He’d been standing two yards from him. And most of all he remembered the one single bellowing cry the man gave: “JACQUES!” He mentioned this to Ramshawe.
“You got him,” said Brooks. “Le Chasseur’s name was Jacques. You can take that to the bank. And the pictures will show you he was the assault commander in the force that stormed the Saudi royal palace.”
“And now his Pyrenean home is under the special protection of the French Secret Service,” muttered Ramshawe. And then he thanked Charlie Brooks for all he had done. Lt. Commander Ramshawe had quite sufficient data to send Admiral Morris directly to the President. After, of course, a quick check with the Big Man.
He walked back along the corridor to the office of the Director, where he knew Admiral Morris had been for most of the night. He tapped lightly and walked in, carrying his dossier of information.
“Hi, Jimmy,” said George Morris. “Have we nailed it down?”
“Definitely, sir. Just spoke to Charlie Brooks in Riyadh, and he confirms he heard Colonel Gamoudi called Jacques, very loudly by one of his troops injured in the fighting. Better yet, he’s been through the film on the embassy surveillance cameras on the outside walls. A few of the frames show the convoy and clear photographs of Gamoudi leading the operation. He’s the forward commander in the lead tank. It’s him all right.
“Back in the Pyrenees, the CIA guys ran him to ground. Found his house. But the French Secret Service were already in there. No sign of Jacques, of course, but there wouldn’t be, would there? He’s in Riyadh helping King Nasir. The CIA agent reckoned it was a race between him and the French Secret Service to get to Madame Gamoudi.
“The French won, and by the time our guys reached Jacques Gamoudi’s village, at o-eight-hundred this morning, the Gamoudi family had been evacuated in the night. Now, I ask you, would the French have gone to all this trouble if Gamoudi had been an innocent mountain guide? Of course they bloody wouldn’t.”
“And this was definitely Gamoudi’s house?”
“Dead right it was, sir. The CIA guys checked in the village, and the French agent in the house said it was probably owned by Gamoudi, but he did not know for sure. He was probably telling the truth.”
“That’ll do for us,” said Admiral George Morris. “Now all we gotta do is find Colonel Gamoudi, and somehow get him right back here to the U.S.A. That way we’ll hang the French Government out to dry.”
“You want me to run this past the Big Man?”
“Yes, I think that would be a good idea. Meanwhile, I’m going in to talk to the President.”
Ramshawe drove his black Jaguar up to the door of the house in Chevy Chase at 0900. Two Secret Service agents escorted him through the front door to see Admiral Morgan, who was sitting by the fire in his study, growling at the
The
“Liberal assholes,” he said. “Fucking dimwits could learn more from two hours with young Ramshawe than they’ll ever know.” Then he looked up and saw his visitor. “Hi, Jimmy,” he said. “Just thinking about you. What’s hot?”
“Plenty. We just ran the ol’ Chasser to ground.”
“Chass-eur, Jimmy. Chass-eur,” replied Morgan, still sounding precisely like Jackie Gleason doing his Maurice Chevalier. But he grinned. He refrained from hurling the newspapers into the fire, which he felt like doing, and set them down on a small coffee table next to him. Then he yelled “COFFEE!” at the top of his lungs — in a bold attempt to attract the attention of the sainted Kathy, in the kitchen — and chuckled at his own appallingness. Then he settled back and said, “Right, Lt. Commander, lay it on me.”
“Well, sir, the CIA got after him in Brazzaville…”
“BRAZZAVILLE…that’s some goddamned dung heap in the middle of the Congo River. How the hell did he get down there? I thought he was in Riyadh.”
“He is, sir,” said Ramshawe, chuckling.
“And will you, for Christ’s sake, stop calling me sir? I’m retired. I’ve been a friend of your father’s for years. Call me Arnie, like everyone else.”
“Yessir,” said Ramshawe, as they each knew he would, both of them being absolute suckers for the easy punch line. “Right, Arnie. The CIA went to work on him in Brazzaville because that’s where we know he served for several months a decade ago. Remember we only had Le Chasseur, nothing else.”
Morgan nodded. “No name, right?”
“No name. But we put the local man on it, and he came up with one almost immediately: Colonel Jacques Gamoudi, a Moroccan, always known as Le Chasseur.”
“Nice accent,” said Morgan.
“Thank you,” replied Ramshawe. “Then the CIA gave the entire French staff the task of actually tracing him. And they located his family home, wife, children — the lot — in a tiny village up in the Pyrenees where he works as a mountain guide. And guess what?”
“The French Secret Service were in that house when they got there.”
“How d’you know that?”
“Put yourself in their place: They’ve handpicked this superb Special Forces officer to mastermind their friend Nasir’s takeover of the country. He’s been out there training his troops for several months. He’s probably served in the French Secret Service himself. Everyone knows him. Then, suddenly, up pops a U.S. agent, from the CIA, in the middle of France, wanting to know who and where he is. Plainly the French will deny all knowledge of him and his whereabouts. But they know Madame Chasseur is up in the Pyrenees with her children. And they know the CIA is hot on the trail of this Frenchman who is smashing up the world’s economy. What would you do, young Ramshawe?”
“I’d get up the bloody mountains real quick and get Jacques Gamoudi’s family out of there.”
“Precisely, Ramshawe. And then what would you do?”
