sucker. She broke into my apartment, listened to me on a wall mike, scribbled secret messages to God knows who, and now was riding the trains through Paris reading a novel and laughing her pretty little ass off. At me. Because I couldn’t figure out what the hell was going down!
I climbed the stairs and went out on the sidewalk. France stretched away in every direction. I got out my cell phone and checked the battery charge.
The time had come to play a hunch. I punched up my list of numbers, found the one I wanted and pushed the button. Two rings, then a male voice answered.
“Hey.”
“Hey your own self,” I said. “Who else is there?”
“Just Al.”
“That girlfriend of Rodet’s. She still in the apartment?”
“Getting ready to leave, I think. She was talking to the maids about vacuuming while she was out.”
“Is there a limo waiting?”
“Not down front.”
“Tail her. You and Al. Don’t lose her, and call me. I want to know where she goes.”
“Okay.”
I snapped the phone shut, then opened it again. I pushed the 1 button and listened to the ring.
“Yo.”
“Where are you?”
“Damn if I know, man. Somewhere in France, I figure, out here ridin’ through the suburbs. We’re aboveground now.”
“Get off at the next stop, get a cab, tell the driver to take you back to your hotel.”
“You know how goddamn much that’ll cost?”
I wasn’t in the mood. “It isn’t your money, Willie. But if you don’t have the jack on you, walk back or take the subway.”
He started to reply but I closed the phone and shut him off. There was a taxi sitting by the curb; I walked over and got in.
“Talk to me,” Jake Grafton said to Sarah Houston. She was sitting at a computer keyboard in the SCIF in the basement of the American embassy, so he pulled a chair around and sat where he could see her face.
“The key logger Tommy installed gave me the passwords to Rodet’s computer and his files,” she said, glancing at Grafton, “and the e-mail addresses to get in to two other computers he owns, one at the apartment on the Rue des Vosges, the other a laptop that either he or Marisa Petrou uses occasionally. I’ve managed to search the hard drives of all three computers.”
“And?”
“None of the three is used to communicate with any secret agent anywhere.”
Jake Grafton made a face. “I had hopes,” he said.
“Don’t we all?”
“How about encrypted e-mail?”
“Nothing long enough to contain a secret message — with, of course, the exception of unsolicited junk e-mail, but that stuff gets filtered out, and no one has ever done anything with those files, as far as I can tell. There is nothing on the hard drives to show that the junk has ever been processed.”
“The Bank of Palestine investment?”
“The computer at the apartment is used to track three investment portfolios, all belonging to Rodet. If he owns a share of stock in the Bank of Palestine, there is not even a hint of it on that machine.”
“So how does Rodet send and receive messages to his agent in Al Qaeda?”
Sarah didn’t reply.
Grafton sighed. If he didn’t use some kind of electronic communications, that left the regular mail. Who writes letters these days? Grafton thought that eventually long, chatty letters would arouse suspicions somewhere, especially in this day and age.
So what did that leave? Well, it left the entire world of third person com, couriers, dead drops, microdots, all of that. And yet, if that was indeed the method by which Rodet and his agent communicated, that meant there was a third person who knew the secret. That third person — if there was a third person, who was it? Someone who worked for the DGSE? Rodet’s estranged wife? His girlfriend? Perhaps one of the agent’s relatives who traveled back and forth fairly regularly.
If there was a third person, anyone really searching would find him or her. That fact alone suggested that the mysterious third person did not exist.
So what method did that leave?
The aerial photo of Rodet’s chateau was pinned to the wall over Sarah’s desk. Jake pulled the pins out, took the print down and studied the photo.
Henri Rodet told his secretary he was going to lunch and walked out of his office. In the courtyard he ignored the limo that was his to command and asked for an agency car. He got in and drove out the gate, turning right on the street.
He checked his rearview mirror at the first light, and the second. No one seemed to be following. Flowing with traffic, he drove to the large parking facilities that served the Pompidou Center and went in. There were four possible exits. He went straight though the building, ensuring that no cars were behind him, and exited.
He parked in a small lot near the Boulevard Richard Lenoir and walked. Ten minutes later he entered a modest restaurant. The staff were still cleaning and preparing for the luncheon crowd.
“Ah, Steuvels. Bonjour, Good to see you again.”
“And you, Monsieur Rodet.”
“Steuvels, I am expecting a friend, an American. He will be along in a little while, and I wondered if we might have one of your private rooms upstairs?”
“Pardon, monsieur, but they are not ready for lunch. You understand, we use them only in the evenings…”
“It doesn’t matter. This is a private meeting.”
“But of course. Come, follow me, and we will make a few preparations. What is your friend’s name?”
“Grafton.”
In the small room, which was just big enough for a table, eight chairs and a sideboard, Rodet had an excellent view out the window. He moved back in the room so that someone outside could not see him.
The day was bright; a square of light fell upon the table.
A waiter knocked, then bustled in with bottled water and two glasses.
“A beer,s”il vousplait,” Rodet said.
When the waiter left Rodet loosened his tie and settled back to wait.
He and Qasim had had their last meal together in a brasserie in the Latin Quarter. The brasserie was gone now — the owner had a heart attack ten, no, fifteen or so years ago. These days the business on that corner sold ice cream to tourists.
Qasim had fallen in love with Paris. Rodet tried to talk him out of going to Egypt. “You don’t need to do this,” he said. “This isn’t your fight.”
Qasim didn’t argue. He took tiny sips of wine and ate slowly, savoring every bite.
Rodet found that it was difficult to argue with a man who refuses to speak, so he gave up. He drank wine and watched people come and go and listened to conversations swirling around them.
When he had finished eating, Qasim ordered the best bottle of wine in the house. The proprietor brought it out reverently and opened it before them. Qasim took an experimental sip, then nodded his approval.
As the conversational hubbub engulfed and surrounded them, he spoke softly, so Rodet had to lean in to hear. “It will be a long time before I write to you. I’ll write to your grandmother. In the letter a place will be mentioned. That will be where I am. Eventually, when it is safe, we will meet somewhere. I will tell you the place and time.”
“It would be best if all our communications are in code.”
“I understand. That will come later, when I have something to tell you. We must wait. The longer we wait, the more they trust me. The more they trust me, the more damage we can do them.”
