The receptionist looked mighty nice. I managed to flash her a smile and collect one in return before I had to march off after the boss. She obviously didn’t know I was a lackey.
The limo driver dropped us three blocks from the embassy due to traffic, and we walked. As we strolled along I asked the admiral, “What was in your note?”
He glanced at me, acknowledging the question, and didn’t answer.
“So ol’ Bruguiere was a bagman for Rodet?”
“He bought stock in the Bank of Palestine for Rodet.”
“In Rodet’s name?”
“Yes.”
“Rodet doesn’t strike me as the type that would be dumb enough to do that.”
“That bothered me, too,” Grafton murmured.
“Someone setting him up, you think?”
“More like taking him down,” Grafton said sourly.
We were crossing the street when I glanced back and saw him. About thirty yards behind us was the man from the Place des Vosges. Not the DGSE agent, the other guy. Dark complexion, medium size, grizzled hair, wearing cleaner clothes than he had when I saw him last.
“We’re being followed,” I told the admiral.
“Anyone you recognize?”
“Yes.”
After we gained the sidewalk on the other side of the street, I kept my eyes moving. That’s when I saw the car, a dark four-door sedan, perhaps a Fiat. I couldn’t tell how many people were in it. I saw it, or one just like it, in front of the Conciergerie when we came out. The walker behind us might have gotten out of that car when we abandoned the limo.
“Enjoying Paris?” Jake Grafton asked.
“No,” I said, and meant it.
When the door closed behind Grafton and his aide, Jean-Paul Arnaud stayed for a moment. “The Bank of Palestine?”
“Check on that, please, and get back to me.”
Arnaud left immediately and closed the door behind him. Henri Rodet returned to his chair behind his desk. The question about the stock in the Bank of Palestine from the American CIA officer had been unexpected.
As he thought about it, he fingered the objects on his desk, one by one, without seeing them, as he considered the matter. Anyone owning stock in the Bank of Palestine would appear to have a financial interest in the success of the Palestinian state and conversely, the demise of its blood enemy, Israel. Diplomatic protests would be lodged; his position would become untenable. So what could he do? Begin an investigation now? When the news broke in the newspapers, it could be made to look as if he were trying to cover up the facts.
Perhaps he should wait. When the news broke, someone’s fingerprints would be all over it. That was perhaps the best course open to him, he decided.
In the interim, he should make sure that no one had gotten into his bank accounts and transferred money without his knowledge. He picked up his unsecure outside line and called his banker.
When they were finally connected and had exchanged pleasantries, Rodet said, “A situation has arisen, monsieur, that has caused me some concern. I wish you to verify the balances of my accounts and check to ensure that there have been no unauthorized transactions.”
“Of course. It will take a few minutes. May I call you back?”
“At this number,” Rodet said, and read it off.
The silence that followed after he replaced the instrument in its cradle was oppressive. Rodet rose from his chair and paced.
He could name two or three dozen people who would like to see him dismissed from the agency, including his wife and her father. And three former ministers and a half dozen sitting deputies. Not to mention his opposite numbers at some of the other European intelligence agencies. Running an intelligence agency wasn’t a job for the squeamish. He had played rough and tough and made his enemies, which was inevitable.
A million and a half euros! A lot of money! All Rodet had to prove it was a few sentences from Grafton. Does the American CIA officer really know, is he lying for reasons of his own, or did he hear a rumor and conclude that he might gain my trust by repeating it to me?
What does he want, anyway?
Rodet remembered the paper in his jacket pocket. He fished it out and unfolded it. It was the corner of a sheet of plain white copy paper. On it were written two words in ink: Abu Qasim.
CHAPTER TWELVE
After the murder of Anwar Sadat, the Egyptians rounded up Islamic fundamentalists in massive dragnets. They interrogated and tortured everyone who looked interesting. Everyone who had anything to do with the assassination plot was shot, as were hundreds of zealots who appeared pleased that Sadat was dead. Yet the authorities knew that there was a real, if somewhat hazy, limit on how many zealots they could execute and not trigger a revolution, so they locked up everyone they didn’t want to waste a bullet on.
Western observers of the Egyptian crisis watched with bated breath. The overthrow of the shah in Iran and the militancy of the Iranian clerics seemed somehow a part of the religious fervor sweeping the Islamic world, a brittle world atop a fossilized religion, one devoid of political freedom and chock-full of the desperately poor, a world threatened by encroaching Western civilization, with its prosperity, democratic values and freedom.
“The last iteration of bomb-throwing anarchists caused World War I,” Henri Rodet’s boss remarked. “This crop looks like they will be tossing them for the next half century. We need some agents inside the Islamic movement. Your job is to get us some.”
Rodet couldn’t believe his ears. “Recruit suicidal religious fanatics to spy on their friends? That would be the same as betraying God. No jihadist would take a chance on forfeiting his place in paradise by selling out his fellow holy warriors.”
“I know it won’t be easy,” the boss acknowledged. “Getting good intelligence never is. Nevertheless, I want you to try. Get us some agents inside the movement. Jihadists they might be, but saints they aren’t.
Rodet had spent two years in the French intelligence agency, and this assignment would undoubtedly be his last. There was no way under the sun that he could penetrate a cell of religious fanatics. It was a ridiculous assignment. Impossible. The boss didn’t like him, he decided, and had picked this method of destroying his career. He would be back on the streets of Paris within weeks looking for a job.
Unless he had help. Someone who spoke Arabic like a native, who knew the people and the religion and the fanatic scene — in other words, a real Arab — could indeed recruit traitors. The boss was right: These people were just people. Regardless of their religious proclivities, they wanted money and sex and power like every other human on the planet. Some of them — well, a few, at least — could be bought or bribed or blackmailed. The real problem was finding those susceptible people.
He thought about writing to Abu Qasim, who was in his final year at the Sorbonne, taking a degree in philosophy, and explaining the problem to him. Qasim believed in civilization, and these people didn’t. Still, his religion and ethnicity would allow him access to places and people that a European could not hope to match.
Rodet thought it over for a couple of days and decided to write. Qasim could always say no. He made that clear in the letter. “The job is identifying people inside the movement that we can target for recruitment. It’s a job that needs doing.”
A week later he got back a message, “Let’s talk.”
Rodet explained the situation to his boss, who was skeptical. Even so, he allowed Rodet to return to Paris. Rodet went by plane.
Even then Paris had a large population of Muslims, so he and Qasim had to be careful. He picked Qasim up one evening and they went for a ride.
They drove out of Paris and headed for a country inn that Rodet knew. At the bar three workingmen from the
