“I can try.”
“You won’t go onstage for a few more days. How are you coming on hacking into Rodet’s computers?”
“I’ve been into the three computers members of his household have used since I’ve arrived in Paris. The e- mail files appear to be clean. There are, however, areas in the hard drives that I can’t access.
“Tommy is going to try to put a key logger on one of Rodet’s computers.”
“That would open the can,” Sarah agreed.
Jake left her there and went to find George Goldberg. He found him in the offices upstairs. “Let’s go to the SCIF,” Jake suggested.
As they walked the hallways, Goldberg asked about Callie. “She like the apartment?”
“Oh, yes.” “The embassy staff rented it. It may be bugged. In fact, I would be amazed if it wasn’t.”
“I thought it might be.”
“You want us to send a team to check?”
“No. Let ‘em listen.”
“Would you and your wife like to go to dinner tonight?”
They made plans.
When they were in the SCIF, Jake said, “I’m concerned that the French know about Carmellini. How did they find out?”
“Two possibilities. They are deciphering one of our codes, or someone told them. I suspect someone told them.”
“How many other leaks have you had?”
“One for sure, and eight or ten possibles. Would you like to go over the files?”
“Yes.”
They settled in for the afternoon.
On the way back to the Rue Paradis Friday evening, I walked past a shop selling Vespa motor scooters. As I stood in the small showroom looking at the shiny paint, a passing rain shower spattered the window glass. I was getting tired of walking, and parking for the rental car was a serious problem. The Metro was inconvenient, taxis were my. What the heck, I was spending taxpayers’ dollars. They had a used scooter there, a nifty red one, so I bought it — with a Terry Shannon credit card. The bill would go to the agency, of course, a fact that made me smile. The purchase required fifteen minutes, and insuring the thing took an hour.
I buzzed off into the rain. I was wet and shivering when I climbed the stairs of my building on the Rue Paradis. Didn’t see the hot woman from Boston.
I unlocked the door to my flat, walked in, and paused.
Something didn’t feel right. I closed the door and stood looking.
Through the years I’ve broken into my share of houses and apartments. One of the skills I acquired for my job of searching for or planting listening devices is the ability to look at a room and memorize the position of everything in it. You do it by sections, the table, the chair, the kitchen counter, and so on.
I scanned the room, looking… ah! The cushions of the couch had been rearranged.
There was nothing incriminating in the apartment for anyone to find. I only had one passport, my Terry Shannon job; everything else I needed for my life as a spy was in my head. True, my cell phone had a couple of numbers on it that I wouldn’t want the DGSE praying over, but it was in my pocket.
I scrutinized the lock on my door. It was an old model, the kind commonly found throughout Europe in older buildings. It had not been forced. Picked or opened with a key was my verdict.
After a long, hot shower, I dressed warmly and pulled on a waterproof jacket. I trooped downstairs, unlocked my ride, and motored off. Yeah, Paris in the rain.
I wound up parking in an area marked off for scooters and cycles on one of the sidestreets just off the Champs-Elysees. I picked one of those restaurants on the avenue that had a glass front; the maftre d’ plunked me at a table right by the window so I could watch the people flow past on the sidewalk outside — and they could watch me.
I ignored the crowd and tried to read a newspaper as I waited for my meal. Didn’t make much progress. I kept thinking about Elizabeth Conner, wondering if she was a DGSE agent. Hmm … How did a well-spoken American woman, if indeed she was an American, get hooked up with French intelligence? Or did she just get smitten by my handsome mug in passing and decide to check me out before she wasted any more time on me? Perhaps that was it.
The next morning I rode the subway out to the airport to meet Willie the Wire. He and I became partners in a lock shop in Washington after he got out of prison the last time. He was a slim, dapper black man twenty years my senior. From the age of fifteen, he worked as a bellboy in Washington hotels. He would probably still be doing it if he hadn’t decided to carry out the guests’ luggage and fence it before the guests checked out. He got remarkably good at picking locks — hence his nickname — although it was inevitable that sooner or later he would get caught.
He had gone straight since his last stretch in the pen and worked middling hard at running the lock shop, taking care of everything while I wasn’t there and entertaining me when I was. We got along reasonably well, I thought, considering our age and background differential.
He spotted me instantly when he came out the customs door pulling his suitcase.
“Hey, Tommy.”
“It’s Terry.”
“Huh?”
“I’m Terry while I’m here.”
“Hell, I’ll never remember that.”
“How was your flight?”
“It felt like I was packed in a slave ship. Let’s go see the Folies.”
“Don t you want to get some sleep?”
‘Hell, no. I want to see something.”
“They do the Folies at night — this is morning.”
We got on the subway and rode it downtown, getting off at the Eiffel Tower stop. When we got to the thing, Willie stood there looking up. Since it soared from a wide base to a point, from the ground it looked as if it reached halfway to Mars. Willie craned his neck, watching the puffy clouds driven by the wind off the Atlantic and the intermittent patches of blue. Finally he tired of it and began ogling female tourists, examining the statues on the Seine bridges, watching the barges go up and down, looking over the whole scene.
Since I was on tour guide duty, I said, “I’ll stay with your bag if you want to go up there.”
“Naw. Been here and seen it — that’s enough. Now tell me about this gig you got goin’.”
“I need someone I trust to watch my back.”
“Oh. Pray tell, who we gonna get to watch mine?”
“I will.”
“Sure! I notice that you haven’t told me what you got goin’ down.”
“Later.”
Swine that I am, I didn’t pass Grafton’s tidbit about the murdered DGSE man on to Willie. Nor did I tell him the happy news that the French spooks knew I was Tommy Carmellini, CIA dude. He would have boogied immediately, leaving me to do Grafton’s chores with the help of the three stooges. Okay, okay — they weren’t stooges. Still, I wanted Willie the Wire behind me. He was high maintenance and whined a lot, but I trusted him; he knew that I’d kill him if he screwed me over. These other guys weren’t true believers like Willie.
Willie eyed me suspiciously. “Ain’t doin’ no shootin’ and ain’t stoppin’ no bullets. Not for a goddamn soul, includin’ you.”
I had had enough. “Want to go home now? You’ve been here and done it and there’s a plane this evening.”
Willie glanced up at the Eiffel Tower one more time, then waved that away. “I’ll stick for a little while, but don’t fool yourself, Tommy. The scene gets heavy, you can mail me a postcard in Washington — I’ll be there when it arrives.”
Right. I had been trying to convince myself that this gig was going to be a piece of cake. Maybe it would be. Besides, the change of scenery would be good for Willie, would broaden his horizons. God knows they could use a
