The police got my name, Terry G. Shannon, from my passport and took a statement. Fortunately for me, I had witnesses for most of it. The tourists were German, and they described the attack.
Five minutes after the police arrived, Muhammed Nada came staggering out of the janitor’s closet. His neck was so stiff he couldn’t turn his head. If he knew I had stolen his phone, he didn’t mention it. The cops took him away for questioning.
I lied a little about old Muhammed. I told the detective that all three of them jumped me, and I slugged Nada first, and I didn’t know where he went after that. Then I shifted to the truth: I was trying to flee but the other two persisted.
“At first I thought they intended to mug me,” I said earnestly. “But now … I don’t know. They may have been terrorists, looking for a tourist to beat up and rob for political reasons.”
It was a lot of bullshit, of course, but my witnesses backed every word. They also latched on to the terror thing and ran with it.
The cops wanted to take me to a hospital; I refused. My head cleared and I was left with only a headache. I figured that with a night’s sleep, I’d be good as new. An hour after the incident, they turned me loose.
They were still cleaning up the mess on the main floor when I left. Luckily the guy who did the swan dive through the clock didn’t hit anybody when he arrived down below. The cop upstairs said he held on to his knife all the way down.
I hailed a taxi and rode over to the embassy. No one followed me, or if they did, they were so slick that I didn’t spot them.
Jake Grafton was still in the SCIF, huddled with Sarah Houston. I told them about Muhammed Nada and presented his cell phone, and I told them about the other two.
“So one guy made a big mess on the main floor, the other dude ran, and Muhammed Nada went off to tell lies to the French police,” I said in summation. “Mind if I sit down?”
Grafton took a look at my noodle while Sarah got the telephone numbers from Nada’s cell phone. “Got a nice goose egg there,” he said. “I thought I told you not to get hurt or hurt them badly.”
“I tried.”
“Lucky for you there were only three of them,” Sarah said over her shoulder, without looking around.
“I’m slowing down as I get older. Happens to everybody.”
My hands were still shaking from the adrenaline overdose and I was jittery. Sitting quietly watching Sarah work seemed to help. My headache gradually eased, too.
“Keep your eyes peeled for those guys,” Grafton said. “They may try again.”
I thought about that awhile. The problem, as usual, was that Grafton doesn’t tell people what’s going on. He knows, but he doesn’t tell. Of course, a guy could always ask. I thought about that, about the pros and cons. It’s not that Grafton is intimidating, either physically or morally. It’s just that… well, he’s the admiral, if you know what I mean.
I sat there thinking about things and worked myself up to it. “What’s going on here, Admiral?” I asked.
He gave me a look, sort of measuring the height and width and breadth of my soul. “A lot of people want to know about Rodet’s spy.”
“What was in the note you gave him?”
“The name of the spy.”
I guess I must have gaped. “Where did you get the name?”
A slow grin spread over Jake Grafton’s face. “If I tell my secrets I won’t have any.”
That was a pretty snarky answer, if you ask me. Still, I could see that he wasn’t going to say any more, so I dropped the subject.
Grafton managed to smile for Carmellini, but he wasn’t feeling chipper. The fact of the matter was that he didn’t know whether or not he knew the spy’s name. Sure, the CIA database had coughed up a name from an interrogation — they hadn’t told him the name of the informant or how the information was obtained or who the interrogator was, all information necessary to properly evaluate the intelligence. And yes, the name had been used by a known Al Qaeda lieutenant who someone else said had once attended the Sorbonne.
Even if Henri Rodet had known an Algerian named Abu Qasim once upon a time when they both were young, and Qasim had attended the Sorbonne, that didn’t make Qasim a spy. Yet the Sorbonne had no record of Qasim under any of the names he was reputed to use. Henri Rodet certainly had the reach to make university records disappear, he reflected, and there was no reason to do that unless one wanted to eradicate evidence that Abu Qasim had ever existed.
Rodet could have had Professor Heger killed… could have done it himself, for that matter. Or Qasim could. But why? Because the professor knew Qasim’s name?
It was possible, Jake concluded. So he had written Abu Qasim’s name on a slip of paper and passed it to Rodet, who didn’t bother to look at it in Jake’s presence.
If Rodet called and wanted to talk, then Grafton would know.
And he would only be on first base. What Grafton really wanted — needed — was access to the intelligence Qasim was giving Rodet. If he was.
Why wasn’t Rodet cooperating with Western intelligence?
One thing was for certain: With the arrest of the Veghel gang, the secret was out. Middle Eastern men had picked up him and Carmellini when they left the Conciergerie; Carmellini had someone’s agent living in the apartment under him — and then there were Claude Bruguiere and Professor Heger, shot in the head. Maybe the foreign powers didn’t yet suspect Rodet of having a spy, but everyone knew Al Qaeda had sprung a leak somewhere.
Rodet must have known what would happen when he told George Goldberg about the Veghel bunch, and yet he did it anyway.
Jake Grafton looked at the calendar. The G-8 summit was next week. He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. Maybe there was no intelligence to share. Perhaps that was the answer. He hoped it was.
It was a pleasure watching Sarah work on the computer. It only took her thirty-five minutes to hack into the main telephone records and come up with names and addresses for the telephone numbers from Nada’s phone.
When she finished, Jake Grafton took the computer printout and studied it. Finally he lowered it and looked at Sarah. “Why don’t you and Tommy go to dinner? A nice restaurant, very public, so everyone can see you. Look happy.”
“Is this part of the assignment?” Sarah asked with a frown. I swear, that woman could squeeze the romance from a wedding cake.
“Yes,” Grafton assured her.
“So Uncle Sugar is paying the bill?” I asked brightly, even though I knew the answer.
“You’re on per diem,” Grafton said flatly. Yep, that was the answer I knew.
“I had the dining room at the George V in mind, but I guess that’s out,” I remarked sadly. Sarah was looking at my reflection in the glass behind her computer. “How about a Big Mac and fries?” I said.
“I know a place,” she replied, and turned off her cyberbox.
Amazingly, my headache had disappeared. The prospect of spending the evening with a beautiful woman always perks me up.
The place Sarah knew was a bateau that cruised the Seine. We wound up on a dinner cruise, for which we had to pay extra. We went dutch, since we were both getting a per diem.
If there were any Middle Eastern types following us, I didn’t see them. Didn’t look very hard, either. We ended up at a table on the top deck. Fortunately we both wore jackets and there wasn’t much wind or we would have frozen.
Sarah was attentive — not flirtatious, just attentive. She listened to every word I had to say, looked into my eyes, didn’t even mention work or computers or the events of the day. I watched the wind play with her hair and told her she was lovely. She smiled.
After dinner we had a liqueur, then danced to a combo that played slow jazz as the boat made the return journey down the river toward its berth on the quay below the Eiffel Tower. Sarah felt good in my arms. Very good. We were young, this was Paris, and that night the future seemed to stretch away toward a glowing horizon.
As Grafton walked back to his apartment, he thought through the problem one more time. Rodet’s agent
