life.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Gaston Savary could not believe what he was hearing. He leaned forward on his desk, resting on both elbows, the telephone pressed to his right ear. In a working lifetime in the Secret Service, he had never been quite so shocked, not even when he was first told that the CIA was inquiring about Col. Jacques Gamoudi.
“What do you mean, they’ve gone? Gone where?”
“But where the hell is Giselle Gamoudi, and the boys?”
“What do you mean vanished?”
“Anyone get the number?”
“Well,” said Savary helplessly, “which way was it going?”
“Did we follow?”
“WHAT HELICOPTER?”
“Is it still there?”
“But what about Giselle Gamoudi and her sons?”
“Holy Mary, Mother of God,” said Savary, and gently replaced the telephone.
Two minutes later — two minutes of stunned silence in his empty office — and Savary called back his Toulouse agent, the luckless Yves Zilber, who was now somewhat hopelessly drinking coffee in the bar of the Hotel Continental, on the Avenue Marechal Foch in Pau, just along the street from Place Clemenceau.
“Yves,” said Savary, “may I presume you have told the appropriate authorities to try and track the helicopter?”
“I bet it was,” muttered Savary, replacing the receiver without a word for the second time in three minutes.
This was bad. This was absolutely diabolical. If Colonel Gamoudi already knew that agents of the DGSE were trying to eliminate him, and he somehow now knew that his wife and children were safely out of France…well, he’d never need to return to his home. Maybe we should freeze his money.
Gaston Savary had no idea what to do. He stood and walked to his office window, staring out of the bleak ten-story building at the depressing view of
Was this really as bad he thought it was? Yes. Worse, if anything. And was he, Gaston Savary, the only one of sixty million French citizens who understood the appalling consequences of the events in Place Clemenceau today? Yes again.
The loss of the Gamoudi family in the Pyrenean city of Pau was a crisis that could see mass sackings, both in the government and the Secret Service. Worse yet, his head would almost certainly be the first to fall.
Standing there alone on this gray, rainy Parisian day, Gaston Savary had a fair idea how Louis XVI’s Queen, the vilified Marie Antoinette, felt in the hours before the guillotine in October 1793. Wearily he picked up the telephone again and instructed the switch-board to contact the French Foreign Minister, Pierre St. Martin, and get him on the line. “Don’t hurry,” he muttered, softly enough for the operator not to hear.
Just then his telephone rang angrily. At least it sounded angry to him. Yves Zilber again, still at the Hotel Continental.
“Sir, I just heard from Biarritz Airport. An unannounced helicopter, flying at more than ten thousand feet, left France and flew straight out to sea over the Bay of Biscay. They alerted the Air Force Atlantic Region HQ, but since the helicopter was transmitting nothing, they decided pursuit would be a total waste of time.
“Ten minutes from that phone call, the helicopter was beyond French air space anyway, and heading west, out over the Atlantic. The Air Force said it was no business of ours, since the aircraft was not flying into France.”
Savary thanked Agent Zilber and replaced the phone. “They should have shot it down,” he muttered unreasonably. “Then we’d all be out of trouble — even though we’d be at war with the U.S.A.”
One minute later his call to the French Foreign Office was through. Pierre St. Martin listened without a word as the Secret Service Chief recounted the disastrous events in the main town square of Pau.
At the conclusion of the dismal tale of French mismanagement, he just said, “And where does the French Secret Service think the helicopter is headed? Washington?”
“Since its range is probably around four hundred miles, I doubt it. More likely a U.S. Navy warship, well beyond our reach.”
“So where, Monsieur Savary, do you think that puts us?” asked St. Martin.
“In approximately as deep an amount of trouble as we can be,” Savary replied.
“Which means we have just one option,” stated St. Martin flatly.
“And I am instructing you to achieve that objective, no matter how much it costs in lives or money. You will find Le Chasseur and you will eliminate him. Because if you do not do so, the United States of America will destroy French credibility in this world for twenty years.”
“But, sir…what about Madame Gamoudi?”
“Gaston. Get into the art of realpolitik. Stop chasing shadows. Madame Gamoudi has gone. There’s nothing we can do about that. What she knows, she knows. What she tells, she tells. But anything she says is about a hundred times less important than anything her husband has to say.
“He alone can sink us. Get after him, Gaston. And silence him permanently. You may assume that is an order from the President of France in person. And, Gaston, if I were in your shoes, I would bear in mind that it was your organization that first leaked to the CIA the whereabouts of the Gamoudi family. It is now your organization that has absolutely failed in its allotted task to keep Madame Gamoudi well out of the way of the CIA…”
“But, sir,” pleaded Savary, “I had eight armed men guarding her twenty-four-seven…”
“Perhaps you should have had one hundred and eight,” said St. Martin none too gently. “In matters of this importance, the cost does not matter. Only success or failure. And I say again: You will find Jacques Gamoudi, and you will have him executed. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir. It is,” replied Gaston Savary. “One last thing, do you still want the Gamoudi family to have all that money, or shall I have the bank freeze it?”
“You may leave that to me,” replied the Foreign Minister calmly.
But there in the great building on the Quai d’Orsay, St. Martin was trembling, both with anxiety and fright. He knew this was probably the end of the line. He knew this might spell the end of his own finely planned political career and his hopes to attain the presidency of France.
He had of course listened intently to the speech made by the President of the United States a few days ago. He had helped to draft his own Prime Minister’s reply. But in his heart, Pierre St. Martin knew the Americans were
