“Marton was very dead, right there in a first-class seat. From all appearances, it was a natural death.”
“Why first class? Why not coach?”
“The French government bought the ticket. Air France upgraded it because there was room in the front of the plane.”
After Harris placed the copies in his trouser pocket, he asked, “Did your man raise any suspicions?”
“He thought not. The attache case and the dead man’s luggage were held by the airline. After his family was notified, a man arrived on the next day’s flight and claimed them.”
“His name?”
“Claude Bruguiere. We believe he, too, is DGSE.”
“And what did he do with the attache case?”
“This happened in Amman,” the Mossad officer explained. He spread his hands. “We have limited assets, as you know.”
“So you’re not going to share that.” It was a statement, not a question.
The Mossad officer smiled.
The American intelligence officer scratched his head, then smoothed his hair. He didn’t have much; the motion was an old habit. Finally he stood and stuck out his hand. “Thanks for the information,” he said.
“You’re welcome,” the Israeli replied as he pumped Harris’ hand.
“You’ve opened a whole can of worms, you know.”
“The worms were already there, my friend.”
“I suppose so,” Harris said.
By pure coincidence, the day the American named Harris had his interview with a senior Mossad official, a well-dressed man in his late forties or early fifties joined a group of tourists waiting for a guided tour of the Chateau de Versailles, the Sun King’s palace that is today in the southwestern suburbs of metropolitan Paris.
The man had a dark complexion, as if he spent much of his life in the sun. Of medium height, he was perfectly shaved and barbered, with a lean, spare frame that showcased the dark gray tailored Italian suit he wore. He wore handmade leather shoes; on his wrist was an expensive Swiss watch. His deep blue tie was muted and understated, the perfect accent for a wealthy man in the upper echelons of international society, which was, of course, precisely what the man was.
An American college professor on sabbatical spoke to the man in heavily accented French, asking if he had ever before toured the palace. He replied with a hint of a smile, in perfect French, that indeed he had, although many years had passed since his last visit. The professor, a single woman who had always been enthralled by France and all things French, gave the man her absolute best smile.
He answered it by discussing the history of the palace as they waited for the professional guide. He knew so much about the palace that the American asked, “Are you a scholar?”
“A businessman, madame,” he said with another hint of a smile. The lady thought him charming. She would have asked more questions, but the guide showed up and launched into a canned speech, and a minute later the group straggled off after her.
The American woman stayed close to the well-dressed man in the dark gray suit. Occasionally, when the guide glossed over some fact that the woman thought might be intriguing, she asked the man, who knew the answers.
The group — there were several dozen tourists, mostly couples— made their way through the palace. They worked their way through the north wing, looking in on L’Opera, the site of the marriage of the future Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, the Chapelle Royale and the picture galleries, then made their way into the center section of the palace. The guide led the group through the library, the Cabinet du Conseil, and the king’s bedroom. From there they went to the queen’s bedroom, where the queens of France gave birth to their children as members of the court watched with bated breath.
“That way there could be no question as to who was the lawful heir to the throne,” the man whispered to the American, who was slightly appalled at the public nature of what she considered a very private event.
From there, finally, they entered the Hall of Mirrors, the great room of state for eighteenth-century France. “In fact,” the guide intoned in heavily accented English, “this room is still used for great state occasions. For example, in 1919 the Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I was ratified in this room.”
It was a huge room, about eighty yards long, with a high, vaulted ceiling covered in gold leaf. The long wall on the exterior side of the building was perforated with tall arched windows, from which one could gaze in awe at the magnificent gardens behind the palace. The opposite wall was lined with mirrors, and the entire room was lit with dozens of dazzling chandeliers.
“Very impressive,” the American lady whispered to her fellow tourist.
He nodded in agreement, and stood rooted as the group moved on.
This is the place, the man thought.
They will be here before the cameras, surrounded by television crews, reporters and security guards. The world will be watching.
We will kill them here.
CHAPTER TWO
How would you like to do a month in France?” my boss, Blinky Wooten, asked. We were seated in his office at the Special Collection Service, or SCS, on Springfield Road in Beltsville, Maryland. The SCS was the bureaucratic successor to the National Security Service’s Division D and was a joint CIA/NSA effort. Our job was to find the easiest and cheapest way to collect the intelligence necessary for national survival in the modern world. Since I wasn’t a scientist, by default I ended up a grunt in the electronic wars.
It was October, and the weather on the East Coast was glorious, the leaves were changing, and football season was in full swing. After four months in Iraq, the place looked like God’s garden. I was in no hurry to leave. On the other hand, I do have to work for a living.
France. I shrugged. “At the embassy? Sure.”
“Huh-uh. As an illegal. The embassy is full as a tick right now. France is going to host the summit meeting of the G-8 leaders at the end of the month. Our people are working with the Secret Service and FBI on a temporary basis to ensure it goes off without any incidents.” Terrorist incidents, he meant.
“If I m going to stand around wearing a lapel mike and looking tough, why the cloak-and-dagger? I could just pretend to be Tommy Carmellini, loyal federal wage slave.”
“I don’t think they need any more door decorations. They have something else in mind for you.”
Hoo boy! Like every other nation on earth, France has laws against espionage, conspiracy, theft, and breaking and entering, which is, by definition, what spies are employed to do. When sent overseas, most CIA officers in ops and tech services were assigned to an embassy or consulate staff, and consequently enjoyed diplomatic immunity if they were caught violating the laws of the host nation. As an illegal, I wouldn’t have diplomatic immunity as a safety net.
But I was used to dancing on the high wire without a net. The SCS staff flitted here and there all over the world, installing antennas, breaking into computer facilities, bugging embassies and consulates, bribing systems administrators, that kind of thing. In and out fast, like an Italian government, was usually the best way. “I’ve heard that France is a friendly country, more or less,” I remarked.
“Well, if they catch you red-handed, they probably won’t give you a firing party, with a blindfold and last cigarette,” Blinky said judiciously, “but they might rough you up a bit.” He looked at me over his glasses while he batted his eyelids another twenty or thirty times. He was sensitive about his nervous habit, or tic, so no one called him Blinky to his face. I averted my eyes so he wouldn’t think I was staring.
I focused on a golf ball he had glued to a tee on his desk — a sacred, hole-in-one ball — as I pondered my options. If a fellow is going to make his living as a spy, France is probably as good as it gets. La belle France — great food, nice climate, fine wine, and the world’s most beautiful women. On the other hand, France is the home of the French… O
A woman I knew had tickets to all the Redskins home games. She enjoyed my company. She had bought the
