number two in the embassy, the guy who actually did the paperwork while the ambassador fretted policy issues and went to cocktail parties with Washington’s society mavens.
I had never seen any mention of Frechon in the files so knew nothing about him. He was of average height, late fifties perhaps, with a face that looked as if it would crack if he smiled. He didn’t bother flashing the chompers at me, just glanced at Marisa and me and went back to looking sour.
If Lamoureux thought it unusual that his married daughter was bringing a man home at three in the a.m., he hid it well. These modern Europeans… We chatted as if I were merely taking a tour of a historic home.
Three polite platitudes later, he bussed his daughter on the cheek, and she took me by the hand and led me out of the library. We stopped in the kitchen for a glass of wine. I really needed every last wit I had, yet I accepted a glass and even took a sip. It was delicious.
“Do you know wine?” Marisa asked.
“Red with meat and white with fish.” I smiled. “In other words, no.
“Nor I,” she confided, leaning closer and lowering her voice. “I drink what I like, and the label…” She flipped a hand in dismissal. I was ready to classify her as a dangerous subversive until I reflected that Marisa Petrou probably hadn’t been served a glass of poor wine in her life.
As she turned toward me, I gathered her into my arms for a serious kiss. She smelled delicious. She put her glass on the counter and used both hands to hold me. That was when I slipped the little pill into her wineglass. I held the kiss for another fifteen seconds, which was more than enough time for the drug to dissolve.
“Well!” she said, when we finally broke for air. “Texas must be a wonderful place.”
“I was thinking the same about France.”
She reached for the glass and took a healthy sip as she eyed me. “You want me, yes?” she whispered huskily. “Un-huh.” That was the only absolutely true thing I had said all evening. My old heart was pounding and I had a sheen of perspiration on my forehead. I took another tiny sip from my glass. It was the high-dollar stuff, all right, smooth as wine can get.
Marisa took a swig from her glass, then seized my hand. “Come,” she said. She brought her glass along.
Her bedroom was on the second floor. Tiny night-lights glowed on the staircase and along the hallway. There were the usual surveillance cameras in the hallway, but none in her room. That was a relief. I wondered if the cameras could function properly at those low light levels.
In her bedroom, she skinned out of her clothes and helped me out of mine. Two minutes after she locked the door, we were in bed.
Of course I wondered if she had had enough of the drug to put her under — she had drunk about a third of the glass — and if so, how long we had before she went to sleep. The answer was yes, she had ingested enough, and the time was six minutes. She merely went to sleep in my arms.
How long she was going to remain asleep was another question. Just to be on the safe side, I removed a small patch from the pocket of my trousers, which were heaped on the floor. I peeled the paper off the sticky side and pressed the patch against the back of one of her hands. The drug would be absorbed through her skin and would keep her under. With a little luck, she wouldn’t even know it had been on her.
I looked at my watch. The guards — there were two — made rounds hourly, and unless I stayed in bed with Marisa, they would find me on one of them. I had to find what I was after and get out. I tossed my clothes on, draped my tie around my neck, left my shirt sleeves unbuttoned.
After making sure Marisa was comfortably arranged in the bed, I turned out the lights and opened the door to the hallway.
I stood there listening. The old house was silent. The night-lights were glowing comfortably.
I hoped her father and his guest were still in the library. I went to the head of the stairs and looked. The lights in the library were still on.
His room should be the one at the end of this hallway. Fortunately he slept alone. I tried the knob. Locked. I put a small stethoscope up to the door and listened. Nothing.
Lamoureux might come upstairs at any time, and I wanted into that room. I picked the lock. That took a long four minutes. I could have done it faster if I hadn’t been trying to keep quiet and wondering if the surveillance cameras were getting all this. As dark as the hallway was, I doubted it. I would certainly find out soon if they were.
When the lock opened, I stepped into the room and locked the door behind me. It would be nice if I could find another exit. Two night-lights illuminated the room. A thick carpet covered the floor, and thick drapes obscured the windows. Cool air came from vents high in the walls. I pulled the drapes aside and inspected the win-
dows. The paint on the sills and sashes revealed that they hadn’t been opened since the building was erected.
The closet was a walk-in. Yes. It went through to a spare bedroom, which was set up as an office. This was my escape hatch if I needed it.
I flipped on my flashlight and began searching — and quickly found what I was looking for: books. Lamoureux had perhaps two dozen in his bedroom, all in French. One of them, one here or one in the library or perhaps one in his desk or locked up in a safe, he used as a key for a cipher. Since it was based on a random word that appeared somewhere in the text of the book, and that word probably changed with every message, the cipher was essentially unbreakable. Oh, sure, with a big enough computer and years to watch it work, eventually a cryptographer would find which of the billions of possible letter combinations would unlock a message. Then the code breakers could do the drill all over again on another message, and so on.
That method of cracking the cipher being unfeasible, the wizards had asked for help. I was the help. I was supposed to photograph the title of every book Lamoureux had routine access to and, if possible, figure out which one was the one.
Since I wasn’t anywhere near as smart as Sherlock Holmes, I decided to photograph all the books. I turned on the room lights, all of them, and began clicking away with my camera. Back in the good old days spies snapped away with Minox cameras, but we were digital now. I used a Sony Cyber-shot. When I had photographed all the books, I opened and closed drawers. No books in the drawers.
He had a desk in the room, and I attacked it. In seconds I knew the drawers were empty. I turned off the lights, then went through the closet to the office. More books. I snapped on the lights and got busy with the camera. On a bottom shelf, lying on its back as if it had just been tossed there, was a well-thumbed paperback, The Sum of All Fears by Tom Clancy, the only book in English I had seen.
I picked it up. The light wasn’t good enough. I turned on the desk lamp, held the pages under it and flipped quickly through them. I was looking for pencil or ink marks. Didn’t see anything.
I put the book back on the shelf and looked at it again. The spine was crazed, completely broken down. The pages refused to close neatly. This book had been read and reread.
Of course the wizards hadn’t bothered to tell me how Lamoureux sent his messages, or to whom, or how frequently. I didn’t know if he sent letters, postcards, or e-mail, or whether his missives went out in the diplomatic pouch or via snail mail. All I knew was that I was looking for a book that was used as the key to a code.
Maybe Lamoureux was a Clancy fan. And maybe—
I heard a noise.
I had the lights off in a twinkling and strode for the closet. I heard the door opening in the bedroom. That told me which way to jump.
I went over to the office door and carefully turned the knob. It was locked, naturally, with a Yale that took a key on both sides.
I immediately looked for a place to hide, just in case the old monsieur decided that right this very minute was a good time to send a coded letter to his mistress in gay Paree.
There was just enough room behind a large padded leather chair. I hunkered down behind it and tried to control my breathing and heart rate.
He knocked around in the closet, then went to the bathroom beside the closet — I had forgotten to look in there for books. When the door closed and the water started running, I hopped out from behind the chair and scooted through the closet, past the bathroom door and across the bedroom. The door was locked, but there was a knob to unlock it. I twisted the knob, slipped out into the empty hallway, and eased the door closed behind me.
Marisa was still sound asleep. I stayed just long enough to remove the patch from the back of her hand. The
