the near future.”
The man beside her merely nodded.
After a moment he said, “Nothing else?”
“No.”
“These meetings are dangerous…,” he said, and left the rest of the thought unspoken.
There was a knock; then the drapes opened. The waiter entered, discussed the menu, took their luncheon orders and departed, closing the drapes behind him.
“I wanted to see you,” Marisa said, when the silence had gone on too long, “to ask you to reconsider.”
“My enemies are closing in,” the man said slowly. “This is my time, my mission.”
“And when you are gone?”
“Others will pick up the sword. They also have their duty to God.”
Marisa sipped wine. “I have never shared your vision of God and duty.”
“But you have helped anyway.”
“A DGSE man was murdered the other evening. Did he have to die?”
“Henri must be protected.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“Yes, I did. In any war there are casualties.”
“So this is the last time I will see you?”
“Unless Henri has a message. He understands the risk involved in face-to-face meetings.”
“And I don’t? Me, a mere woman?”
The man said nothing.
“I wish, for my sake, that I shared your vision of God and duty and obedience to the word of the Prophet. But I don’t. I think you are making a great mistake, and when you stand before the throne of God, He will judge you harshly.”
“You blaspheme.”
“Perhaps. I will stand there, too, one day, and He will judge me then. I am afraid I shall have many sins to answer for.”
With that she seized her purse and rose from her chair. He put out his hand to stop her, but she drew away.
“Good-bye,” she said, and, defying the rules of the house, she parted the drapes and departed without an escort.
On my third day in Paris, we put magnetic signs that advertised a plumbing concern on the side of the surveillance van and parked it on the Place des Vosges in front of the old houses undergoing restoration. We lucked out — I could see four of Rodet’s windows from the passenger seat. I scrambled into the back of the van and turned everything on.
The tech support guys had done some serious work on this van in Rome. It had a white dome on the roof, which didn’t look like anything much. It was merely aluminum bent and pounded into shape, then painted white. The interior of the dome, however, was painted black. Under it was a laser and a sophisticated telescope, also painted black. The dome could be manually raised two inches and latched there, then the laser radiated through the gap. It was simple and effective; anyone standing on the sidewalk would never notice the gap between the dome and the van roof.
The laser was aimed at a windowpane, which vibrated from a variety of causes, including sound and wind. Aimed at the vibrating spot of laser light, the telescope focused the image upon a sensor that converted the microscopic movement of the spot into digital signals; a computer processed those signals into sound. The system did not use the reflection of the laser beam, so the angle of incidence was not critical. Amazingly, in perfect atmospheric conditions, the system had a theoretical maximum range of three miles. All one needed was 1 window — and a wizard, someone who understood the system and could wring human speech from all the other sounds that vibrated le glass, such as traffic in the square, a television inside the building, a washing machine in the basement, planes going by overhead, and soon.
Our wizard was Cliff Icahn. I had worked with him last year for a few weeks in Berlin, and he knew his stuff. He looked sour this morning. “We’re not going to hear anything,” he grumped. “There’s too damn much noise. I’m no miracle worker.”
I spend my life in the company of optimists. “Well, let’s try it awhile,” I told him from my perch on a toolbox near the back doors of the vehicle. We had tools, pipe elbows, brazing equipment and the like stacked there to display to a policeman, should one demand to look inside the vehicle. Between it and the laser was a solid wall of shelving, most of it made of balsa wood to save weight. “If we don’t, we can’t keep you here. You’ll have to go on home.”
That comment dried up his objections. Cliff and his wife didn’t get along, which was the reason he volunteered for every overseas job that came along. He spent more time out of the United States than he did in it. I didn’t know why they stayed married, and I had no intention of asking.
He diddled with the telescope for a moment, ensured the solid-state accelerometers were working and allowing the computer to compensate for the movement of the van, then turned his attention to the computer. When he eliminated all the extraneous noise, we hoped we would be left with voices. It was a Saturday morning, so who could say? From where I sat I could see tourists wandering along, looking at the buildings. I looked for young or middle-aged men who were interested in people, not buildings. Saw one, finally, who did nothing but sit on a bench and watch people.
Finally Cliff said, “I’ve still got a buzz that comes and goes.”
“Vacuum cleaner?”
“Maybe. I’m going to take it out… if I can.”
Sixty seconds later he stated, “Now I can’t hear a damn thing.”
One explanation for this phenomenon, if the equipment was functioning correctly and Cliff had tweaked it properly, was that there was nothing to hear. I refrained from stating the obvious. Outside, halfway across the square, the watcher I had spotted a few minutes ago lit a cigarette. So far he hadn’t even glanced at the van.
I got out of the van on the side away from the watcher, crossed the street, and started hiking.
I walked the sidewalks around the square, which were protected from the weather by the overhang of the floors above. There were shops, artists selling paintings, people in casual clothes and people dressed fit to kill. Women pushed strollers along. A derelict wearing a long coat and a brimmed hat sat on one bench.
I was a half block from the door of Rodet’s building when a limo stopped in front of it. The chauffeur got out and opened the rear door on the sidewalk side. The woman who emerged was in high heels, hose, an obviously high-fashion dress, and a fur jacket. Brown hair combed so one ear was exposed. I got a glimpse of her face, but she didn’t see me. Marisa Petrou!
She used a key on the door to the building, then disappeared into it. The chauffeur got back behind the wheel of the limo and rolled.
When I got back in the van, I asked Cliff, “What have you heard?”
“The maid likes American pop tunes.”
“There’s hope for the world after all.”
“Someone came in a while ago. A woman. The maids turned off their boom box. The woman inspected the place, told the maids to do the toilets again. No names.”
Our watcher was still in his seat. I pointed him out to Cliff. “That guy. Scan his face. Put him in our database and send the image to Langley via satellite. I want to know who he is.”
The face scanner was another digital toy. If the computer placed points on the captured image of a face, then measured the distance etween those points, thereby converting the scanned face to a series of digits. Amazingly, faces are like fingerprints, each unique.
It took only a few seconds for Cliff to aim the scanner, focus it and capture the image. The computer did the rest, including sending the lcrypted digital signal to Langley via satellite for comparison with the agency’s database.
We had our answer in six minutes: the man’s name and the fact that he was a DGSE agent.
The derelict huddled in his coat on the park bench watched Tommy Carmellini circle the square. The brim of his hat was turned down all around his head, and it obscured much of his face.
