neighborhood drank calvados. The floor was uneven, the furniture old and scarred and the room chilly. Fresh from the heat and stench of Cairo, Rodet found it very pleasant. He and Qasim sat at a table in the corner.
Finally he asked the question. “Would you help us recruit some agents inside the Islamic movement?”
“Someone inside who will feed you intelligence?”
“Yes.”
“It could be done,” Qasim said simply. “But not if they know who is receiving the information. These people are committed to the depths of their souls, earning eternal life in paradise by fighting God’s battles. They may be a lot of things, but they aren’t hypocrites.”
“How can we keep our identities a secret from them?”
“The agent will have to become part of their world. He will have to be in a cell, or perhaps a financier or an armorer. Only if he is a trusted part of the conspiracy will he be told things. He will be given pieces of the puzzle. That’s about all one could hope for.”
Qasim was right, of course.
“Our agent will have to actually help them,” Rodet mused aloud.
“Indeed. He must become an actual part of the terror network and help them in a visible, material way. He must earn their trust every day. And if an operation is betrayed, he must remain above suspicion. It must be delicately handled.”
Rodet laughed. “I thought you were studying philosophy?”
“I have been. And I have been reading history. This war between civilization and religious zealots has been going on for nine or ten centuries, at least. Heretics, torture, witches, people burned at the stake, God’s kingdom on earth in the care of dedicated holy men… When holy men rule based on religious scripture, one gets hell on earth, not heaven.”
“There’s not a lot of flexibility in the ‘Thou shalts’ and the ‘Thou shalt nots,’” Rodet agreed.
“The holy men are fighting for the right to rule Islamic society,” Abu Qasim said. “History teaches that holy men always lose in the end. Even if they win the battles, they always lose their wars. It would be better for everyone if they lose this one quickly.”
The inn served wine from barrels. Qasim savored a glass with Rodet.
“You need a man,” Qasim said, “who knows these people and isn’t afraid of them. Surrounded by fanatics who are absolutely convinced of the correctness of their cause, he must be even more so, believe in himself beyond any shadow of a doubt, believe in what he knows to be right with a faith that will withstand all adversity. And he must be willing to drive the knife in to the hilt.”
“You are describing a superman, an idealist made of something other than flesh and blood,” Rodet objected. “Jesus and Mohammed, perhaps. People like that do not exist in the real world.”
“Oh, but they do,” Qasim said lightly, and helped himself to more wine. “The world is full of them, which is, perhaps, part of the problem. The men who murdered Sadat were such men. A dozen popes, Henry VIII, Cardinal Richelieu, Robespierre, Marat, Napoleon, Lenin, Dzerzhinsky, Stalin, Hitler, Churchill, de Gaulle… the list goes on and on.”
The proprietor brought their meals, but Rodet had no appetite. He stirred his food around with his fork and listened to Qasim talk.
“You need a man who can live by his wits, a man who is willing to play the game unto the last drop of blood. He must know the language, the religion and the culture. Any mistake will be fatal.”
Finally his younger friend got around to it. “I am that man.”
Rodet and Qasim finished their meal. Over the dirty dishes they discussed what the agent might expect to learn and methods of communication.
“If the agent plays it straight within his network, does his job and maintains his cover, he will do fine,” Rodet said, “unless they discover how he sends or receives his mail. That will always be a risk.”
“The biggest risk will be here in Paris,” Qasim mused. “Everyone who knows about the agent in place is a potential danger. Everyone who knows of the mail system is a danger.”
“In a perfect world only one man would know,” Rodet remarked, “and that one man would be the handler.”
“Then there is the problem of what use to make of the intelligence. Every terrorist arrested, every cell destroyed, every assassination plot thwarted will point, in some small way, back at the agent. He knew. Other people, too, but he knew. Eventually the noose will tighten.”
“We must always appear to have another source.”
“That will only work for so long. These people are paranoid. They don’t need proof, just a suspicion. Sooner or later they’ll get one, and from that moment on, the agent is a doomed man.”
“This game will be brief,” Rodet admitted. “Still, the intelligence could be valuable.”
The workmen at the bar had long gone and they were nursing snifters of cognac when Rodet asked Abu Qasim, “Why do you want to do this?”
“I learned one thing at the Sorbonne,” Qasim said, weighing his words. “Civilization is worth fighting for.”
“That’s not an explanation.”
“Maybe I don’t have one.”
Henri Rodet thought about that for a while. The truth was that he didn’t give a damn why Qasim was willing to risk his life. Qasim was a friend — well, more like a younger brother, really — and he didn’t want him hurt.
“All right,” he said after a while. “All right! We’ll give it a try. But only if you promise to cut and run if they began closing in, or when you’ve had enough.”
“I am not a martyr,” Abu Qasim shot back. “Dead men win no battles.”
That conversation occurred twenty-five years ago, and still Henri Rodet could remember every word as if it had happened yesterday evening. He was thinking about Qasim, about the life he must lead, when the telephone rang. The receptionist told him the man’s name. His banker.
“I have your balance, Monsieur Rodet.” He gave him the number. It sounded within a thousand or so euros of the sum Rodet estimated should be there. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”
“No, thank you,’ Rodet said. He murmured a pleasantry and said good-bye.
The watchers in the Fiat followed me when I left the American embassy late that afternoon. I walked, so they put one man on the sidewalk behind me, and the others — there were at least two more in the car — drove back and forth on cross streets or sat behind me in no-parking zones, always remaining within a block of me.
Grafton and I were pretty sure this bunch weren’t French. Of course, everyone was into diversity these days, so they could be working for any agency on the planet. Yet if they weren’t French, they were fair game. “See if you can find out who they are, Tommy,” Grafton said just before I left the embassy. “Be careful. Don’t let them hurt you and don’t hurt them so badly that you get arrested.”
“I understand,” I said.
The weather was excellent, with the temperature in the sixties, mostly sunny skies, and a whiff of a breeze. I took off my suit coat and folded it over my arm.
Strolling the boulevards of Paris, I considered my options. I needed to get one of these guys alone for a few minutes. The watcher in the Place des Vosges had been alone, but would he be in the future? If he came back at all.
I walked through the gardens of the Tuileries, heading for the Seine. I walked briskly, purposely, looking neither right nor left, taking no precautions against the tail that I knew was back there. The car couldn’t follow us and, with a little luck, would be struggling to get through late afternoon traffic on the Place de la Concorde.
My tail would have a cell phone with him, of course; he was probably on it right now. I didn’t turn to see.
I crossed the Seine on the Passerelle Soloferino, a walking bridge, and walked directly for the Musee d’Orsay, an old railroad station that had been converted to a museum. There was a line waiting to buy tickets, of course.
I joined the queue, ending up immediately behind a trio of young women from the States. From the comments they made, I learned that they were American students doing a semester abroad. One of them had met the love of her life a couple of weeks ago, so we heard all about him. As the girls chattered — they glanced at me when I got in line and then, due to my greatly advanced age and general decrepitude, ignored me — I glanced
