vehicles. I didn’t find anyone sitting in any vehicle within two blocks of my building. Surveillance teams often used vans or other closed vehicles for short-term setups; I located a couple that might fit the bill, but even as I watched, one, a flower delivery van, was driven away by a guy who had just carried an arrangement into a building.
The possibility that watchers were monitoring people coming and going, or bugs in her flat, could not be ruled out, I concluded. I hadn’t found them, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there.
The women and their customers on the street? Now that I had time to think about it, I doubted if any of them were watchers. A new woman would draw the instant suspicion of the others, and men that hung out for hours on the street would be labeled as mashers, or worse.
What I really wanted to do was search Conner’s flat. Not that I expected to find her DGSE building pass or a signed note from her boss. Still, whatever was there would offer some insight as to who she was, what she was interested in, or, perhaps, what she might do next. On the other hand, if she thought I might search her place, her apartment could be a trap. It was an interesting problem.
I suspected her next move was to give me the opportunity to know her better, sort of the same thing I did this past spring with the gal in Washington, Marisa Petrou. I wasn’t quite ready for that.
I examined my collection of goodies that Jake Grafton had sent via Salazar. One of the items was an optical camera. It was a curious device. The lens was on the end of a long, flexible stalk, one about a half inch in diameter and ten feet long. The end of the stalk had some kind of wire material wrapped around it, so it would hold a shape. I bent it into a ninety-degree elbow and lowered it out my window. The end of the stalk had a quick-disconnect fitting on it, so I pushed that into the appropriate hole on the small television unit. The viewing screen was about three inches by three inches.
I turned the unit on, adjusted the gain and brightness, and eureka! The gadget worked. I could see most of the room. I played with the controls of the unit. When I finally got the picture as clear as I could, I studied the room below.
Her apartment seemed to be laid out identical to mine, with a large — I am being charitable here — room that functioned as living room, dining room and bedroom. In addition, there was a tiny kitchenette, a miniscule closet and a small bathroom with a tub that was only big enough to sit in. The whole thing was about the size of a standard hotel room. There was no telephone. Like me, Conner probably used her cell to communicate.
Terrific! I turned the unit off and disassembled it. Then I sat thinking about things.
I used the infrared goggles to inspect every inch of the apartment below, just in case. No people in sight. I put on my latex gloves, then went down one flight and examined her doorsill. No sensors, wires, nor any mark that hinted that the moldings had been removed in the last twenty years. I picked the lock and let myself in.
With the door closed behind me, I stood and looked. The time spent looking from the door was insurance; I was looking for markers that would show that someone had searched and memorizing the placement of every item I could see. One of the items in the goodie bag was a small ultraviolet flashlight, which I used now to see if perhaps Conner had dusted her room with a powder that can be seen in ultraviolet after it comes in contact with the oils on skin. I don’t like the stuff because you can’t get a surface scrupulously clean before you apply it, so it reveals itself in ultraviolet even before somebody smears it with a finger, and any pro worth a nickel wears gloves. She hadn’t used the powder. I pocketed the light and began searching.
She had no cameras, no CD player or iPod, none of the usual electronic gadgets that trendy young adults can’t get through the day without. A television was the only artifact of our time. I must say, I wondered how she did it. The answer, apparently, was that she was a reader. Lots of books, many still in boxes waiting to be unpacked. I glanced through the assortment that was on display; most of the titles were French, heavy books of philosophy and social commentary— Camus, Sartre, the struggle of labor, developing a fair trade policy, the economic challenge of the new world order and so on.
Still, the fact that she had no gadgets bothered me. She hadn’t just arrived from planet Ork.
I worked as quickly as I could, checking everything. I found her packet of lock picks, which she probably used to visit my digs, and I learned the brands of her favorite toothpaste and soap and shampoo.
I didn’t find her passport. No doubt she had that on her.
I was standing in the middle of her apartment when I saw the paperback on her nightstand. I had seen it when I first walked in, but the title didn’t register. Now it did. The Sum of All Fears, by Tom Clancy. Were all the spies reading Clancy this year?
That was the only paperback in English that Conner owned, unless one of the unopened book boxes contained a few.
I made sure I knew how the book was positioned on the stand, then examined it. It was certainly well thumbed. I found one word scrawled in pencil on the title page: definite. No other marks that I noticed. I replaced the book on the nightstand.
Finally I examined the ceiling, every square inch. I didn’t stand on anything, just walked along using my eyes, which are excellent. I was looking for a bug, or a mark that showed a bug had been there — and found one, by golly: a circular mark about three inches in diameter that looked as if it had been made by a suction cup. It was over the desk, in a position she might reach if she stood on the chair. I looked at the seat of the chair — got my nose six inches from it and really looked. It was possible she had stood on it, I decided, but I saw nothing definite. Still, that round thing on the ceiling looked like a mark that a suction cup would make.
I went back to the television and turned it around so I could see the back of it. Well, how about that! The back was held on with four screws. A couple of the heads had marks on them, as if they had been in and out a time or two. I went looking for a screwdriver and found one under the sink in the bathroom.
Working quickly, I took the back off. There was the suction cup, a coil of wire, and a headset. I reinstalled the back and replaced the screwdriver under the sink.
A check of my watch. Seventeen minutes. I had been here too long. I took one last look around to make sure everything was as I had found it, then left and locked the door behind me.
Henri Rodet was late again for his Monday meeting with Jean-Paul Arnaud.
Inside his office with the door closed, the director said by way of apology, “One of my Dobermans managed to break his neck last night on the automobile gate. Apparently he wedged his head under the gate and broke his neck trying to get free — a freak accident. And the power failed. The power fools are still working to replace the transformer.”
The secretary had followed Rodet into the office, and now she served espresso to both men. Then she withdrew.
“I heard on the radio that the Israelis and Palestinians are at it again.”
“A murdered policeman; more shelling in response.”
Rodet opened the classified morning briefing sheet and scanned it as he sipped his coffee. Halfway through he laid it down. “That dog, Marcel — I don’t understand how he did it. He was the brightest dog I have ever had.” He paused, then added, “Without power, the household was in turmoil. There was no breakfast.” He shook his head in frustration, then shrugged and picked up the report. “I will miss that dog,” he remarked. “Nothing new on Bruguiere?”
“No, sir.”
“An unsolved murder of a DGSE agent will cause us problems with all the foreign security people. I will speak to the minister. The police must do more. And we must do more. I want everything that man ever worked on reviewed. And check on the old gang from Algeria — they may know something.”
Arnaud nodded.
They carefully went over current developments in European capitals and had moved on to the political situation in Iraq when the telephone rang. It was the secretary. “Monsieur Rodet, an unsecure call from the CIA Paris station chief, George Goldberg.”
“George Goldberg,” Rodet said to Arnaud, who lifted his eyebrows. Rodet punched the button. “Bonjour, Monsieur Goldberg.”
After the usual pleasantries — exchanged in English, which Rodet spoke fluently — Goldberg got around to the reason he had called. “One of my colleagues is in town, and I wondered if I might bring him around to meet you.”
Since this was an unsecure line, Rodet didn’t ask who the colleague was or what he wanted to discuss. He glanced at his desk calendar, then said, “Of course. Perhaps Wednesday, about three in the afternoon.”
“Perfect. I’ll see you then.”
